15th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Cathedral of Mary Our Queen
July 15, 2023
The Garden of Our Souls
As most of you know, my residence is in downtown Baltimore, but behind it, between the house and the Basilica, is a small grassy area, with a small urban garden where tomatoes, basil, and oregano are growing. I’m neither a farmer nor a gardener, but I sometimes check on our little garden, and I’m happy to see that the seeds planted in the spring are beginning to bear good fruit.
This Sunday we are invited to look at another garden: the garden of our souls. This is not a piece of land that we bought but a gift from the heavenly Father. He wants nothing more than to work with us in cultivating the soil of our hearts so that they will be receptive to the seed of his Word and thus bear good fruit. And as our first reading from the prophet Isaiah makes it clear that the seed of God’s Word is always effective and lacking nothing. The Word that goes forth from God “does not return to him void but accomplishes the purpose for which it was sent” (Is 55:10). This is because the seed of God’s Word is the Eternal Word of God, the Christ, and the inner dynamism of this seed is the Holy Spirit.
The seed comes to maturity when we come to maturity in Christ: when we become in name and in fact true children of the heavenly Father who are real disciples of Christ and faithful members of his Body the Church, women and men who manifest the fruits of the Holy Spirit in our lives. This is why God made us. This is why he gave us an immortal soul. This is why he sent his Son into the world to suffer, die, and rise. And this is why we receive the Holy Spirit in the Church’s sacramental life.
The seed of God’s word is planted everywhere, in every heart without exception, but God the Father will not cultivate the soil of our hearts without our permission and without our cooperation. After all, God endowed us with freedom, for without freedom there is no love. And what God wants to engender in us is a sustained, indeed eternal response of love that emerges from the root of our being and finds expression in our daily lives. But we are complicated creatures, are we not? The seed of the Word of God is always effective but our openness to it varies. So, this is the question before us this Sunday: how open are we to God’s Word? When Christ speaks to us, what kind of a reception to we give to his words? When he asks to till our hearts with his two-edged sword, do we agree to it or not?
Four Possibilities
In his parable, Jesus lays before us four possible responses to the Word, i.e., to himself. It should give us pause that three of the four possible responses are negative – three of the four are not only non-productive but destructive of the seed God sows, and thus destructive of our happiness, our well-being, and even our eternal destiny. The stakes are high as we review these four possible responses.
First is the seed that fell on the footpath, the much travelled path of the world. This is the hardest soil of all. It’s what one author calls, “a promiscuous heart” – a person who follows after every trend and ideology, no matter how illusory, preferring any and every word or message to the Word of God. Don’t we see this phenomenon in today’s culture, especially in social media? But it can also lurk in hearts that subordinate their faith to the culture not vice-versa, who critique the faith according to the latest trends and expect it to conform to them. When one’s heart is “all surface and no depth”, the Evil One will devour the seed of God’s Word; it has no chance of bearing fruit.
Next is the seed that fell on rocky ground, where the soil has no depth. The seed germinates and new growth appears but soon dies for lack of roots. This is how Jesus describes a superficial reception of his Word, that is, when the faith is received enthusiastically but not in the depth of one’s heart. It might be a sudden conversion, a feeling of fervor, a burst of religious imagination. We might pray so long as it feels good, go to Mass as long as we get an emotional high …but lack the patience we need to allow God’s Word really to germinate in our hearts and to transform us, body, mind, and spirit – from the inside out. Satan loves this strategy: to get us excited about our faith and then to let us down. When the good feelings go away, when there’s disagreement or persecution, he tells us to leave it all behind and to turn against the One who sowed the good seed. What does our experience tell us? Is our faith a mere pastime, or is it the root and branch of our lives?
Then there is the seed that fell among thorns and thistles. Again, the plant sprouted and began to grow but its growth was choked. Jesus uses this image to describe hearts consumed by care and anxiety on the one hand, and by the pleasures of a worldly life on the other, and how it is easy to have such a heart! Little by little, in our daily lives, cares and pleasures can choke off our faith. Perhaps this is one of the occupational hazards I face as your bishop. In caring for the Church, especially in difficult times, I can crowd out the Lord. My prayer can become little more than rumination about problems and worries, rather than casting my cares upon the Lord and humbly seeking his wisdom and strength. Maybe you’ve found yourself in a similar situation. And what of the pleasures and enticements of life – who of us isn’t distracted? The mad rush for profit, the burning desire for riches, is itself soul-deadening, yet we live in a culture where this is taken for granted and even made the norm. Yet God remains ever the beggar as he knocks at the door our preoccupied hearts, even though he is the One who has given us everything, his own life, on the Cross. The choice before us is stark and admits of no middle way, no compromise.
Finally, there is the good soil that bears a rich harvest of abundant fruit – the good fruit of holiness, the fruits of the Holy Spirit, the fruits of evangelization, attracting others to Christ and the Church by being and living differently. The seed of Christ’s death and resurrection, planted in such hearts at Baptism, grows. It grows by listening to God’s Word, by the worthy reception of the Eucharist, by the dynamism of the Holy Spirit in Confirmation, by confessing one’s sins, and by embracing one’s vocation and living it with sacrificial love. It grows when we give of ourselves to others, especially those in need. The seed enters the ear, reaches the heart, and in God’s grace, the heart is transformed – and as the seed matures, we foster the growth of those around us, sometimes intentionally, sometimes without our ever knowing it.
The Blessed Virgin Mary
If there is anyone in whom the seed of the Word of God took root, it is Mary. Hearing the angel in faith, she said her unequivocal “yes” to God, and by the power of the Holy Spirit the Word became flesh in her, and from her we have received the Author of our life and the Savior of our souls. Whatever the Lord has told each of us about ourselves in today’s parable, let us call upon Mary, asking her to pray with us and for us in this Eucharist, that we may be the fertile ground in which the seed of God’s Word grows and bears a rich harvest of everlasting joy for ourselves and for many others. And may God bless us and keep us always in his love!