15^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Gospel – Matthew 13:1-23

Spread the Word

The Fields of Galilee

Dear Deacon Bill.

            Thank you so much for coming to our Graduation and giving such a wonderful homily.  Thank you also for the card; it really meant a lot.   I’d also like to thank you for everything you’ve done for me over the years.  I’ll always be grateful to you for teaching me how to altar serve and lector and for the opportunity to teach others how to serve.  I hope to make you proud by becoming a teacher myself someday. 

Your influence on my spiritual and physical growth is incomprehensible, and it has made me a much better person.  You and Ginger will always have a special place in my heart.

Your Server,

RJ

 My guess is that, sometime in life, we have all received a note like that!  A sincere, heartfelt thank-you for something you did, something you said, maybe something you don’t even remember doing!  It’s the sort of card/letter that you hang onto, store away as one of those treasures of life that brings warmth to your heart and a reminder that you truly make a difference in someone's life, even when you don’t realize it!

At times, it’s embarrassing – who is this person they’re talking about?  Me?  All I was doing was just being myself!  And yet somehow it had an effect; somehow it took root and blossomed.

The Gospel today is very a familiar one.  The Sower and the Seed.  Some fell on rocky ground, some on the path, some among the thorns, and some on fertile soil.  We know from Jesus’ explanation to the disciples that the seed is the Word of God, the message of salvation.  And the different soils are the many different people who hear the Word and how they respond!

Often we are called to reflect on what type of soil we might be – how open are we to the Word? Do we hear it and follow it for just a while and then move on?  Are we so caught up in the worries of the world that those worries choke the Word out of us?  Does it take root?  Does it bear fruit?  In the process, we picture God or Jesus as the sower. 

But let’s do something different – let’s put ourselves in the role of the sower.  Picture yourself as the one who scatters the seed.  Every day we scatter the seeds, the seeds of faith, the seeds of the Word of God.  Isn’t that our calling?  To be Christian?  To act Christ-like?

From our perspective, the Sower in the parable is a miserable failure – 75% of the seed he scatters never takes root, never bears fruit!  But does that really make him a failure.  Whether he knows it or not, some of what he scatters does take root; it does blossom and bear fruit.

And so it is with us!  Every day we scatter the seed (the Word), every day by our words, our actions, and our interactions with others. The seed falls where it may and most of the time we never see it take root, most of the time we never realize that we are sowing the seed.  We just sow the seed and move on in life.  

And sometimes, unexpectedly, like that altar server of mine, something we did, something we said takes root and makes a difference in someone else’s life. 

We are all called to be Christian, we are called to bear witness to the Gospel message, we are all called to be sowers of the seed.     And that is what we are challenged to do today – to scatter the seeds of faith, to spread the Word!