By Deacon Richard Hay
“Enriching the Soil of our Soul”
Anyone here consider themselves a gardener?
Gardening is a continuum that ranges from those who do not consider their day complete without having dirt under their fingernails from working in the garden and those like me who are lucky to keep a plant green and alive. I am really good at making plants brown that aren’t supposed to be brown.
My wife Margo was the first kind of gardener with the greenest of thumbs. She could take plants that others were struggling to keep alive and have them blossom under her care.
Twice a year she would bring home about three hundred pounds or so of topsoil from the local garden store – the trunk of her Volkswagen sedan filled to the top, with the lid barely closed, and riding on the rear axle from all the extra weight.
Of course, it would be my job to distribute those bags around the garden so she could then come and work all of it into the existing soil so that the plants and flowers she loved so much could grow and flourish.
Gardeners know the importance of having rich soil in their flower beds, vegetable gardens and potted plants.
Today’s gospel, which we all know as the “Parable of the Sower”, is about the richness of our own soil – our own soul. It doesn’t matter if we have a green thumb or not because as we know – anything is possible with God.
We understand that Christ is the one sowing the seeds which are the Word of God. It is the Holy Spirit who cultivates the Word in us so we can grow our soul in the richest soil possible.
Those two words are very similar, aren’t they? Soul and Soil. As someone pointed out to me, the only differences are the letters I and U and we are on this journey together.
The four different types of soil that we hear about have everything to do with the readiness of our own soul to hear, receive, and live what God offers us in the Word of God through Jesus Christ.
Life is a continuous journey of growth, sometimes we move forward and sometimes we might take a step backward, but God’s will for us is to always keep our eyes on Him, to grow in His love, and to be His people.
A gardener understands that a garden is also a continuous journey – not always at its best because of insects, weather and other things. Today’s parable provides an insightful way to see how our lives can parallel the life of a garden based on the richness of its soil.
In the gospel, as the seeds were sowed, we heard that some fell on the path. The seeds in this area are right there on top and exposed to all the elements. However, they are quickly consumed by birds and never get the chance to even sprout in the cracks of the path where there might be just a little bit of soil to start nourishing it. However, even if some of those seeds were to start growing in the cracks of the path – it is a tough existence, and someone is going to eventually come along and pull that plant out or chop it down with a weed eater.
This happens in our own lives when we hear the Word of God and do not understand it, do not take it into our own soul, do not act on it, and don’t seek to learn more. It never has a chance to take root and blossom.
Next, seeds are sown on the rocky ground. However, plants need soil so that their roots can provide nutrients and water to help them grow. Those plants may grow for a time in the rocky ground but eventually, without that rich soil, they are only going to grow for a very short time before they wilt and die for lack of roots.
Have you ever been challenged about your faith? Are we willing to stand up for that faith in the presence of ridicule or maybe the loss of a friend because of our beliefs? If not, then our soul is trying to grow without deep roots and can be easily persuaded to not stand up for the faith to avoid those persecutions that come from family, friends, and society.
The seed which is sown in the thorns is like the rocky ground but instead the plants trying to grow do not get all of the possible nutrients from the soil because the plants with thorns are taking it away and choking their roots.
Our soul experiences this when we hear the Word and understand what we must do to live it out in our lives, but we get distracted by worldly matters and the plants from those sown seeds never have a chance to bear any fruit.
Even when we experience these difficult & challenging situations for trying to grow rich in our own soul at different times in our lives, the Word of God can make the soil of our soul rich if we receive it, embrace it with love, and let the Holy Spirit cultivate it.
Gardeners know what will happen when seeds are placed in rich soil and are nurtured – they will grow and blossom and bear fruit for all to see.
I believe at some point in each one of our lives, we experience all four of these types of soil in our soul. In fact, sometimes we might move in between these different experiences depending on where we are in life and what we are facing. Life is not a straight line, growth that will produce abundant fruit takes effort and that is OK.
So how do we keep our own soil, our own soul, rich? We do that by grace.
Where do we get grace – through the sacraments that were given to us as a sign of God’s love for us.
The church defines sacraments as effective “…signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us.”
In other words, the sacraments do what they say they do – provide us holiness and grace in our lives. By God’s power – they simply work.
That grace is even more important than the food that keeps our human bodies alive, because they enrich the soil of our soul so that we can bear fruit “a hundred or sixty or thirty-fold”.
