MEDITACIONES SOBRE El EVANGELIOMuestra

"MEDITATION 17: A Sower Sowed his Seed and two Men Built their Houses." “By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples” (John 15:8). This sentence, written years after Luke’s Gospel, adds another dimension to the first parable we read today. It is another “agricultural” image, yet one where Jesus is not a sower or a grain, but the vine whose branches are the disciples. In any event, the purpose in each case is the yielding of fruit. The parables fulfill, at least, a double purpose. In a symbolic way, using images familiar to the audience, Jesus communicates a moral message they can understand, if their ears are ready and willing to accept the calling to enter the kingdom of God. But those same words and images are mysterious and obscure to those who are obstinate and refuse to listen. In that case, “they may look but not see, and hear but not understand (8:10). The parable of the Sower is rich in the sense that its images can be interpreted at different levels. It is possible that some of the nuances we find may have gone unnoticed by Jesus’ audience. But then we do have the privilege of the explanation Jesus himself gave to the disciples. There are four main characters: the Sower, the seed, the soil and the fruit. The Sower is, obviously, Jesus himself who proclaims and “sows” the word, the message of the Kingdom. But for us, who have read John, he is also the seed: the message and messenger are the same. In any case, the seed is sown generously, as it reaches every space in the field. Now we find a real paradox. Following the image of the parable, we should expect the different soils to be the recipients of the seed, but the parable takes an unexpected turn. The seed represents those who are sown! All of a sudden we find that the message, the word, is not something that comes to us, but something that transforms us into the message itself. It is not a question of receiving, but of developing, becoming grain and fighting the circumstances that prevent us from growing and developing. In that sense, we should identify ourselves with every single seed and soil, and discover that, just as the branches cannot bear fruit if they are not united to Jesus, the true Vine, or unless the builders dig down to reach the solid foundation of our lives, (who is also Jesus), we will neither produce good and abundant fruits, nor build our lives into a firm house able to stand rain and floods. Rev. Fr. Mariano Perrón, Roman Catholic priest, Archdiocese of Madrid, Spain