The Gospel today gives us an opportunity to reflect on multiple topics – the sower, the seed, the soil, and the harvest.
In reflecting on these topics, it is important that we remember that none of them is a one-time event. The sower must plant the seed over and over again. The seed must fall into the ground at the beginning of each growing season. The soil needs to be constantly refreshed, fertilized and rested from time to time. Finally, the harvest must be gathered in at the end of each growing season.
So it is as well in our lives of faith. We need to constantly renew ourselves, constantly expose ourselves to God’s word, constantly cultivate good habits of prayer and penance, and constantly reap the benefits of our faith in God’s providential care.
St. Paul also uses the metaphor of the sower to explain the resurrection. The prevailing culture when the Gospels and the Letters of St. Paul were written was agrarian, so the Scriptures reflect that culture and mindset.
God is the sower, but so are we. What we shall reap at the time of the harvest depends upon our efforts at cultivating a life of faith. We live in hope of reaping an incorruptible, glorious, powerful and spiritual body that will live forever with the Lord.
Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator