Getting Ready to Pray
The readings for this week invite us to a sense of fertility and fruitfulness. We earth-people are rained upon by God’s gracious showers of holy life, providing the earth and our earthliness the assistance to grow from dirt-level up to the heaven-heights.
We pray to receive grace as the crops drink in their nourishing rains. We bathe in God’s love as do flowers in the warmth of the sun. We pray to live generously, giving life, sustaining life, and caring for life in all its forms, from earliest beginnings to latest endings.
Some Thoughts
We have for our First Reading a poetic section from the final chapter of The Book of Consolation also known as Second Isaiah. This chapter opens with the famous verses about the invitation to “come to the water all you who are thirsty.” The fifteen chapters of this book or section deal with God’s bringing Israel back to life within a new covenant. The infertility of their past infidelities are forgiven and something “new” will be brought forth.
In the next several weeks we will be hearing parables, which are easy-to-remember stories with several interpretations. They are meant to catch the attention of the listeners and are invitations to the listeners to find their places in the stories.
Fortunately, Jesus gives a rather clear and pointed explanation of a parable after telling the parable itself. He presents simply both the person who sows the seed and the various types of soil which receive the seeds. The soil produces according to its quality of depth.
The more important part of this Gospel’s parable is about where we find ourselves. It is too easy to say that we are the soil of the “path” or the “rocky ground” or the “thorny patch.” Is there no “rich soil” for seed to find a rooting?
Once I attempted to teach poetry to second-year high school students. Their usual response was, “Why doesn’t Jesus come right out and say it?” The “it” here is the mystery of the kingdom and there were those who listened for insights and head-knowing, but they were not letting “it” get close, inside and permanent.
Knowledge and insights do not save. Answers invite only more questions. Parables are for those who know beyond knowledge. They hear and see beyond senses. Tribulations, persecutions, worldly fears and the desires for riches are all parts of our human soil. The Word of God, Jesus, has come to improve the soil and assist its knowing and growing.
We are in the school of intimacy, at the heart of Matthew’s semester-long course on who Jesus is and who his coming makes us. By ourselves we will whither and default to our beaten-path.
The influence of the significant people in our lives changes us far beyond the power of thought. We must stay attentive to Jesus, who lovingly desires to bring God’s goodness out of our good soil.
How happy they who dwell in your house!
For ever they are praising your name.
Psalm 84
