15th Sunday of Year A

May God bestow you with his graces that will enable you not only to have the ears to hear his word but also to put it into work so that you will bear the expected fruit in abundance. Happy Sunday! + John I. Okoye

DOCTRINE AND FAITH

(Isaiah 55, 10-11; Romans 8, 18-23; Matthew 13, 1-23: 15th Sunday of Year A)

            One of the prominent features of authentic Christian life is the fecundity that follows from a life-transforming attentiveness to the word of God. For the Christian, the word of God is not just a bundle of statutes and laws that command compliance, it is rather something very real that defines and determines one’s entire life. According to St. Paul, the word of God is something alive and active. The author of the book of Hebrews also attests: The word of God is alive, effective and sharper than a two-edged sword.

    The word of God by itself and in its nature is efficacious and capable of producing good fruit. This is in cognizance with what the prophet Isaiah holds in the first reading of today: As the rain and the snow fall from heaven and do not return without watering the soil, making it fertile, in the same way, says the Lord, will the word that comes from my mouth, not return to me without being effective, without doing what I intended it to do, without completing that thing for which I sent it. Thus, there exists a cause-and-effect relationship between the word of God and what it accomplishes. The word of God is consistent and reliable and human beings are totally dependent on it, as they depend on the nature God created. The word of God is performative or dynamic. By this, it is meant that once God speaks, the deed is done. When God said in the book of Genesis, let there be light, there was light. God’s word is his will. The metaphor of rain and its effect employed by Isaiah assures us that we can be confident in, and therefore, rely on the word of God just as we can place some measure of trust in the working of the natural world. Just as nature produces miracles upon which we can rely and because of which we can survive, so the word of God will effect miracles upon which we can rely and because of which we can live. We can live by the word of God if we are open and receptive to it.             In today’s gospel reading, Jesus identifies the different levels of receptivity to the word of God in the hearts of men. In some hearts, the word of God gains no proper entrance; it is left to settle only at the edge, thereby making no lasting impact on the individual. Others close up to the full indwelling of this word due to the superficiality of their disposition, while some others allow untold cares and worries to stifle the word already sown in their hearts. Yet, there are those who approach the word with the appropriate disposition, and are able to bear fruit in abundance. 
            The word of God remains a fecund seed in itself. However, every seed needs good soil and  apt ambient for it to germinate, grow and bear fruit. This brings us to deduce that the word of God, which Jesus sows in every one of us, needs the good disposition of the spirit to take flesh in us, grow and bear fruits of strong faith and good works. What and what are these good dispositions? The first is: humble disposition to listen. This boils down to mean, to listen to the word of God with openness, avidity, thirst and strong desire to be illumined and nourished by it. It means always listening to it, even when it is not palatable to us, exposes our weakness, condemns our wrong deeds and demands renunciation and sacrifices. Another disposition of the soul required so that the word of God might bear fruit is: constancy and force of will. The word of God proposes to us an ideal of life, a life that is lofty and noble. It is easy welcoming it at first with enthusiasm. It is, however, not so easy, nay arduous, to welcome all the demands and implications of the word of God, allow it to influence our actions and persevere in following the dictates of the word. For our response to the word of God to be effective, it has also to be holistic. By this we mean that we do not pick and choose when to listen to it, we do not listen to it when it is palatable and put a deaf ear when it is making radical demands from us. By being holistic also indicates listening to the word of God as found in the Scriptures, the liturgy, the celebrations of the Sacraments and the living traditions of the Christian community. We listen to God’s word that is sown in many forms and under many guises, in the events of the everyday life, both private and public. In this consideration we note that it makes little difference who sows the seed. God works through both the well recognized and the most unlikely sowers. The sower of the word of God  might be a legitimate leader of the Christian community, the Pope, the Bishop, the Priest etc or one of its otherwise ordinary members; it could be a child or an elder; it might even be someone from the outside; someone with whom we are not familiar, or do not particularly like. God moves through life indiscriminately, sowing the seed prodigally. The soul searching question is: how do we receive it?

 Today we are invited to reflect on how responsive we have been to the demands of God’s word.  Has it been able to touch our lives and transformed it or have we allowed frivolities, superficiality and fear of change to render it inactive, ineffective and unproductive?   What do we do with the word of God we listen to every Sunday, read to us and preached to us? God’s plan for us is revealed in his words, and the way we open up to this word goes a long way to determine how much of the life of God we may hope to have in us. Therefore living the life of God demands that we bear fruits by allowing his word to guide our way of life. Happy Sunday!

+ John I. Okoye

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