Traditional Catholic Teaching - SEXAGESIMA SUNDAY

SEXAGESIMA SUNDAY

A sower went to sow his seed.
St. Luke 8: 5.

“When a very great multitude was gathered together and hastened out of the cities unto Him, He spoke by a similitude.” Very many people assembled to hear Jesus, brought no doubt by various motives. Some came out of mere curiosity, so as to be able to say: "I have heard Him" probably there were few whose hearts were eager to receive His teaching, and the parable that He uttered shows this to have been the case.

Jesus looked at all the crowd, but an outward glance did not have much effect; then He looked into them all, and all their hearts lay bare and open before Him as He began to speak, to teach them how these hearts should appear and how they should not appear, when the word of God was preached to them.

Your hearts, too, lie open in our Lord's sight. You may be able to hide from men how much or how little you care for the salvation of your souls, but you can conceal nothing from Jesus. You may impress men with an idea that you are deeply interested in the things of God, but you cannot deceive God. You may mislead men by a merely respectable, orderly way of life, devoid of all inward love and fervour, but your appearance, looks and manners are nothing to our Lord, who cares only for your hearts, and not the outward husk, as it were, of your hearts, but their inmost centre. We may describe as the outward husk our feelings, which appear to be good, gentle and pious, but, like the apples of Sodom, often contain nothing but repulsive dust and ashes. The centre of the heart is the will, which should be firm and steadfast, ready for any conflict and any suffering for the sake of what is right. This is what our Lord sees, and He found it in very few of the multitude that followed Him.

We are but few; would that He could find such a good will in every one of us, few as we are! May the seed of the word of God, sown by the Divine Sower, not remain without fruit in our hearts! "The sower went out to sow his seed, and as he sowed, some fell by the wayside, and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it." Our Lord Himself explained this parable: "The seed is the word of God, and they by the wayside are they that hear, then the devil cometh and taketh the word out of their heart, lest, believing, they should be saved."

Our Divine Master speaks of the word of God as seed, it is not yet fruit. The seed requires labour on the part of men and God's blessing before it can grow, blossom and bear fruit. Much toil and exertion are necessary before God's word can produce in us true piety, and practical, living Christianity. It is not enough merely to hear and know God's word. The misleading argument : "I have learned my religion" is worthless ; we must be able to say also: "I have practised it, practised it by self-denial and wholesome severity towards myself."

Why do so many people learn our holy religion, and yet possess so little real religion? At school they sit and listen, they go to church and hear sermons, and in the confessional they receive good advice. They talk about pious subjects, they read good books; they romance about supernatural things, but their way of life remains unaffected by all this. They take no pains to practise their religion, nor to make the seed of God's word bear fruit. Our Lord referred to those who hear, but do not practise what they hear, in the third part of the parable, where He compares their hearts with a much trodden path, where the seed is trampled down and carried away by the birds.

I teach and preach, and scatter the seed of God's word in the name of Christ; but what is the use of my speaking to you, if your hearts are set only on earthly desires and fancies, and if you do not try to control your perverse inclinations, your whims and fancies, your temper and passions? What I say makes no impression upon you, for you are hard as a well-trodden path. The word is uttered; it is a tiny seed and yet how powerful! The sound of the word soon dies away, but your sentence of everlasting misery or eternal happiness depends upon your reception of it with a hard or a docile heart. Your hearts should be docile, not soft and yielding to sweet, romantic feelings, but ready to accept what is good. Some day we shall meet again, face to face, before our Judge, who will ask: "Where is the fruit of the seed that I entrusted to you to scatter?" — "Lord, I scattered it with a good and honest purpose." "But where is the fruit?" — "Lord, it was my task only to sow the seed; it did not depend upon me whether it fell on good soil or on bad." And then the Judge will turn to you and ask again: "Where is the fruit?" Well will it be for you if you can produce some; but if you cannot, excuses will avail you nothing.

Many people on that day will probably plead as an excuse that the birds of the air devoured the seed, i. e., that the devil took the word away from my heart. Adam and Eve put the blame of their transgression upon Satan, and human beings have always followed their example But would he be able to take away the seed from a heart in which it was planted deep in the love of God? Such an excuse is worthless. If your heart had not been hardened by the footsteps of worldly thoughts and by the constant hurrying to and fro of evil thoughts and desires, Satan could not have carried away the seed of the Word of God, for he has power only over such as are superficial and frivolous, not over those who love God. The excuse is worthless and the punishment eternal.

You ought to have soft hearts when you come to hear the word of God — soft, not in the sense of being effeminate or emotional, but in that of being ready to receive what is good. Our hearts are softened to emotion at times of prayer as well as in temptation; in prayer, they are inclined towards what is good, in temptation towards what is evil. Emotion makes us shed tears when our sins are laid bare before our eyes, and tears, too, of self pity, when we have to carry out our good resolutions. Emotion leads us to listen patiently both to the teaching of religion and also to words and suggestions against it. Emotion makes us enthusiastic admirers of morality and yet is easily led away by the false doctrines of immorality. It exists simultaneously with the hardness of heart that arises from the constant action of a worldly disposition.

But softness of heart is compatible with firmness and strength of character, the want of which often causes the sower to sow in vain, and the birds of the air, that is to say, bad companions, bad books and bad examples, to destroy the seed, so that many hear the word of God, but have no faith and therefore are not saved.

Think often of this first part of to-day's gospel! Consider how necessary it is for strength of character to be united with readiness to accept all that is good. May God preserve your hearts from the two fatal extremes, which have plunged so many into destruction, namely, weak emotion and the hardness of a worldly disposition. Amen.

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