Coffee With God

Reflection: Matthew 13:18-23

We come today to the explanation of the parable of the sower. Many scripture scholars today believe, that this interpretation to the parable of Jesus may be coming from the tradition of the early Church. The parable focuses on the sower while its interpretation looks much more at the soil in which the seed falls. The interpretation reflects the experiences of the early Church as it tried to spread the Gospel. The four different kinds of soil are taken to represent four kinds of responses to the Word of God. The explanation is also understood as an attempt to illustrate the various ways that people responded to words of Jesus when Jesus actually spoke to them. The explanation to the parable aims to help the disciples to identify the difficulties that the Word of God encounters in everyone. The failure in results depends neither on the seed nor the sower, but on the type of soil. It is not talking about four categories of persons, but four interior dispositions found in every person. Every person can have all these four different dispositions when he or she receives or responds to God’s message. Meaning to say, no one is totally bad to reject the Gospel. There are areas to work on in everyone, to prepare the ideal ground for the Gospel. The seed is excellent, because it is the Gospel and the sower is an expert, because he is Christ himself. Why then is it so difficult to penetrate into the hearts of people and bear fruit? The Gospel calls on us to reflect on our dispositions. Let me borrow the explanations of Fr. Armellini on the seeds that fell on the road and the birds came and ate them. A road or a path is where everyone passes. The seed does not penetrate on the paths because the soil is trampled on by everyone. It means that we give in to everyone’s way of thinking, everyone’s way of reasoning, valuing things as everyone does. And this voice of everyone is often not in tune with the voice of the Gospel. And when we follow what everyone says, even if the message of the Gospel reaches our ears, it does not penetrate into the heart, because the ground is hardened, as it is trampled by the logic of everyone. And the birds arrive. There is a lot of talk in the Bible about birds. In chapter 15 of the book of Genesis the birds of prey represented the pagan peoples who wanted to divert Israel from the covenant with the Lord. What do these birds of prey represent today? Secularisation, a thousand distractions, permissiveness, nonsense circulating on our smartphones, the fashions that make us lose our minds…. And we unwittingly give up the message of the Gospel to the birds.