Saints and Scripture Sunday

I'm a little late this week for Saints and Scripture...but I figured better late than never! Sunday's gospel reading is one of my favorite parables, and I wanted to spend some time on it.

Matthew 13:1-9

On that day, Jesus went out of the house and sat down by the sea.
Such large crowds gathered around him
that he got into a boat and sat down,
and the whole crowd stood along the shore.
And he spoke to them at length in parables, saying:
“A sower went out to sow.
And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path,
and birds came and ate it up.
Some 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.
But some seed fell on rich soil, and produced fruit,
a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold.
Whoever has ears ought to hear.”

How often I feel like these seeds! At times I am like the seed that falls on rocky ground. I hear the Word and am joyful, but the roots do not develop and my joy withers at the slightest of troubles. Other times -- and I think most times -- I am like the seed that falls among the thorns. I hear the Word and feel the joy, but as I grow and take root, my leaves are choked by the thorns of the world.

Of course, we all want to be like the last seed that falls on rich soil. I want to accept God into my life, not just when it is easy, but when rough times come as well. I want my roots to take hold in the rich soil of Jesus Christ. Easier said than done, but no one said being a Christian was an easy call.

Each one of us can look into his own conscience today and discover to which class he or she belongs. Are some of us perhaps, like the seed that fell on the rocky ground? While Christianity makes no very difficult demand we are all for it, but when it demands mortification, the curbing of passion, real sacrifices for our neighbor, do we forget our Christian calling then and ignore its precepts? And how does our type of Christianity stand up to the temptations of the world—the desire to get all the enjoyment we can out of this life, licit or illicit, breaking God's commandments weekly or maybe daily? Are we chasing after wealth and power, using all our energies to rise in the world to be above our neighbor by fair or foul means? If the above are our aims in life, our Christianity has been or is being choked out of us.

There are millions of saints in heaven today, enjoying eternal happiness, who had some, if not all, of our present failings. We, too, can be with them one day, provided we do what they did. They repented sincerely and remained God's close friends, until he called them to himself. May the merciful God give us the grace to imitate them while we yet have time.

Excerpted from The Sunday Readings by Fr. Kevin O'Sullivan, O.F.M.