Memorial of Saint Francis de Sales, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
Wednesday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time
January 24, 2024
Today’s Readings:
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/012424.cfm
Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, Jesus tells us the parable of the sower and the seed.
And he taught them at length in parables,
Mark 4: 2-9
and in the course of his instruction he said to them,
“Hear this! A sower went out to sow.
And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path,
and the birds came and ate it up.
Other seed fell on rocky ground where it had little soil.
It sprang up at once because the soil was not deep.
And when the sun rose, it was scorched and it withered for lack of roots.
Some seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it
and it produced no grain.
And some seed fell on rich soil and produced fruit.
It came up and grew and yielded thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold.”
He added, “Whoever has ears to hear ought to hear.”
How many times have we heard or read this passage over the years? Maybe so many times that we’ve become a little impervious to it. Maybe we can hear something too much.
For example, as a group of us watched the 76ers basketball game last night, the commercials seemed endless. At one point Anne Marie asked me, “Would you ever buy that?”. Although I was staring at the commercial, I had no idea what it was saying. I had tuned it out and was looking right through it!
Here’s the thing: I could hear the commercial, but I wasn’t listening to it.
I think it’s like that with today’s parable and other scripture passages as well.
We’re probably not farmers. If you’re like me, the best you’ve done is to plant an orange seed in a ten-cent flower pot when you were kindergartners! So the parable might not catch our hearts when we hear it for the 100th time unless we have learned to listen as well as hear!
But when we listen to this parable we might realize that, maybe, for us:
- the seed fell on the path and got devoured by birds that time when we let up on our dedicated prayer time and took up some useless distraction
- the seed fell on rocky ground when we failed to study a politically charged issue in the light of the Gospel and instead got caught in a media-spun theory
- the seed fell among thorns when we allowed our morality to be influenced by gossip, cheap judgments, self-serving agendas, or biased opinion
- the seed fell on rich ground when we gave our spirits quiet time, prayer, good spiritual reading, the companionship of graced friends, and all the other holy kindnesses that can make us better persons
As I write this blog, it’s so cold where I live that, unless you had a jackhammer, you couldn’t even plant a seed. We don’t want our hearts to be like that. We want supple hearts, ready for the amazing graces God scatters over our lives daily. Let’s do the work to be ready.
Poetry: The Sower – William Cowper (1731 – 1800) was an English poet and Anglican hymnwriter.
One of the most popular poets of his time, Cowper changed the direction of 18th-century nature poetry by writing of everyday life and scenes of the English countryside. In many ways, he was one of the forerunners of Romantic poetry. Samuel Taylor Coleridge called him “the best modern poet”, whilst William Wordsworth particularly admired his poem “Yardley-Oak”.
Cowper’s religious sentiment and association with John Newton (who wrote the hymn “Amazing Grace”) led to much of the poetry for which he is best remembered, and to the series of Olney Hymns. His poem “Light Shining out of Darkness” gave English the phrase: “God moves in a mysterious way/ His wonders to perform.” (Wikipedia)
Ye child of earth prepare the plough,
Break up your fallow ground;
The sower is gone forth to sow,
And scatter blessings round.
The seed that finds a stony soil
Shoots forth a hasty blade;
But ill repays the sower's toil,
Soon wither'd, scorch'd, and dead.
The thorny ground is sure to balk
All hopes of harvest there;
We find a tall and sickly stalk,
But not the fruitful ear.
The beaten path and highway side,
Receive the trust in vain;
The watchful birds the spoil divide,
And pick up all the grain.
But where the Lord of grace and power
Has bless'd the happy field,
How plenteous is the golden store
The deep-wrought furrows yield!
Father of mercies, we have need
Of thy preparing grace;
Let the same Hand that give me seed
Provide a fruitful place!
Music: Amazing Grace
Lavish Mercy 