Today’s Gospel is the first of a series of Parables that we will hear over the next few weeks.  Parables are more than just analogies or comparison stories, they are more like riddles, they contain some sort of twist or surprise in them.  As we heard today, parables are often hard to understand, but usually if you can spot the twist then you can understand the meaning of the parable.

Today’s Parable of the “Sower and the Seed” contains two twists I’d say, the first is more obvious than the second.  The first is simple, this Sower is a terrible farmer!  Seed is expensive.  It was then and it still is today. So for this sower to be so careless as to plant seed on the road or the rocks or into thorn bushes just shows how terrible he is at farming.  I mean it isn’t that hard to just plant into fertile soil.  But also we should remember Parables are more about God then they are about us, because we can get a lot out of this parable about the human condition and our response to the word of God as sown in our hearts, but what is really amazing is how generous the sower is, maybe even careless, but super generous, attempting to plant seed everywhere even places that seem obviously barren. However, even though He seems to be the worst farmer in the entire universe, He does plant some soil in fertile ground, and therein lies the second twist.  As a number of scholars have argued, in an ordinary harvest in the first century, seven- and-a-half fold would be an average harvest, and tenfold would be a good harvest. So the twist here is that this terrible farmer reaps a huge harvest “a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold” - this would be miraculous, especially given his farming aptitude.  But God is very generous, Jesus is the sower who proclaims the Kingdom even to those who won’t respond, He has hope for everyone, planting in the hope that the thorns will be cleared and the plant may grow in good soil.

Now as I look out here, I see a lot of good soil. Jesus says, “the good soil is he who hears the word and understands it.” He is talking about not just the heart, but the mind as well. I believe we all want to understand the word, we want to grow in our knowledge of the word, in our knowledge of the faith and wisdom. Since you are here at Mass I believe you are good soil, when the roots can go deep enough not just for the plant to live, but to actually bear fruit, and not just to bear fruit, but to bear a lot of fruit, abundant fruit. Not just tenfold, but thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and even a hundredfold - which would be miraculous fruit. So what does the fruit represent? Well if the seed is the Kingdom, then the fruit is going to be the grace of the Kingdom, bringing others to conversion, bringing others to discipleship. It might be miraculous signs and wonders, healings and such. It might be the preaching and the teaching of the Good News to others. There is all kinds of manifestation of the fruit, bringing other people to repentance and teaching them to live a life of deeper discipleship. That's what the good soil does, it becomes a place for the Word to bear fruit in the Kingdom of God. This is super clear when we look at the lives of the saints.  Pick any Saint, your favorite Saint, whoever that is, and think about how long they have been dead for but yet the influence they have had on your life and will continue to have on other peoples lives for years and years to come.  That’s producing a hundredfold, in the Kingdom of God, they didn’t necessarily see it here but the fruit is abundant in the view of Heaven. 

But rather than dwell on Saints who sometimes can be unapproachable for us, just think about someone in your family who lived a holy life, who influenced your own faith and others.  I believe we underestimate how important our practice of faith within our family, and what that alone can do for the Kingdom. So it is important that we who are here, good soil receiving more nutrients at Mass, that we don’t take this lightly and we work to receive more nutrients every day, not just on Sunday.  Because what I worry about is that often we have a strong faith that is very much in our heart, yet our roots aren’t deep enough that we can really explain it. 

I’d like to give an example from my own family, with my mom and her family, the seeds of faith were sown into their hearts as children and they just always believed it, they didn’t need biblical proof, they didn’t need signs and wonders, they just believed.  And then she raised her son that way, which was good but he didn’t really know the faith in his head, just his heart.

But then when a Protestant girl came protesting her son’s faith, using the Bible against them, neither mother nor son know what to say, how to defend their Catholic faith, the Catholic faith which gave them this bible by the way, Catholics decided which books would be in the bible in the 4th Century, this is our book!  Now don’t get me wrong, don’t hear what I’m not saying… this is not an us versus them, I don’t dislike Protestants. It isn't their fault they don’t know what they don’t know, they don’t know what they are missing especially in the Sacraments and that potential for an even deeper relationship with Jesus Christ. But, this is a call for us to deepen our faith, to really nurture our roots.  Jesus said, “the good soil is he who hears the word and understands it.”  Do we really understand it or do we just go through the motions?   Personally, I know I went through the motions growing up, I got engaged at age 23, and I was going to get married in a Protestant church because my fiance didn’t like the Catholic Church.

Once I came back to the Church I heard about the Eucharist (John 6:22-69) and Confession (John 20:23) straight from scripture and I said to myself, “What else did I miss?”  I started reading the bible, I started praying, I started a deep dive into the Catholic faith at age 25, and I realized, the more and more I studied, and learned and understood, the more and more I realized it was all true, the Catholic Church contains the fullness of the truth. But that also scared me a little.  I thought, what did I almost do?  I almost walked away from the Catholic Faith, from the true presence of Jesus in the Sacraments, from the Truth that I had sown in my heart but I really neglected all of my life.  And I decided I needed to do something to help others to not walk away from their faith, thats a big reason why I became a Priest.

This is why I always give you books.  This is why I try to help you understand why we do what we do.  This is why I like to emphasize adult formation over children’s because I just don’t think our Church did a very good job for a lot of years teaching the faith, really nurturing our roots so that we could defend it past our heart, and if parents don’t understand it, the children won’t either. So, 3 resources for you today..  First this one sheet piece of paper that is titled “Biblical Evidence for Catholics” from St. Joseph Communications.  You should take this, fold it once, and put it in your bible.  Better yet, take this, go through each verse, underline it or highlight it in your bible, read it in context, learn it, understand it, be ready to make a defense for your faith. Second, a double sided piece of paper which was my revelation about the Eucharist and Confession back in 2007.  Understanding this truly changed my life. Third, a book about the Eucharist called This Is My Body by Bishop Robert Barron.  Our Church is in the middle of at Eucharistic Revival, and since it is truly Jesus present in the Sacrament we consider it to be both the source and the Summit of our Faith.  I believe understanding the Eucharist will help us to get through a lot in our faith, all of the trials and struggles. In order to bear fruit that will bless our families for years and generations to come we need to stay focused on this real presence of Jesus, Jesus is here in our midst, the Kingdom is at hand, God loves us and is continuing to nurture us with His Body and Blood through it all!