Many biblical scholars refer to the first reading for mass today, as a precursor to the Eucharist. God gave the Israelites manna to eat in the wilderness. The manna fell from heaven in the form of dew and when the Israelites asked Moses what it was, he said to them “It is the bread the the Lord has given you to eat.”
Jesus later told his disciples, “Amen, amen, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” Then Jesus went on to say “I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died; this is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”
We could think about these words the rest of our life and many theologians probably have. God fed His people manna in the wilderness because He loved them and He did not want them to die. Jesus gave us his flesh to eat in the form of the Eucharist because he loves us and does not want us to die either. God and Jesus both think alike, but more importantly, they both love us very much. Their care and concern for us is evident throughout all the stories of the bible. God loves us unconditionally and it is worth noting in the first reading from Exodus today, that the whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron, and yet God still answered their prayers. This should give us hope too, when our own dispositions deteriorate into complaining about the less than perfect circumstances we sometimes experience during our own lives. Complaining to God in our prayers may not endear ourselves to Him, but He does hear what we have to say.
The crowds that gathered around Jesus in today’s gospel were so eager to hear what he had to say that Jesus had to get in a boat in order to better address them. The gospel said that he told them many things in parables. It sounds like not all the parables Jesus taught was written down, but the parable about the sower and the seed must have made a lasting impression because it was recorded in the gospel. The Lord taught people with visual pictures for a reason, because a picture lingers in the mind. Words we may forget, but images we never will.
And that is the point of today’s gospel. When we listen to the Lord’s words do we really hear them and take them to heart? Are we actively listening at mass when we hear the word of God read? A lot of times people leave mass and someone will ask them what the readings were about or the priest’s homily and they can’t recall the details. They remember hearing it, but the words did not sink in. The parable of the sower and the seed explains this when Jesus said some of the seeds fell on the path and the birds came and ate them up! The distractions we experience at mass prevent the “seeds” God’s word to soak into the good soil. Sometimes we are under a lot of stress when we arrive for mass, or the children are fidgeting, the babies start crying or we get distracted by the immodest clothing the young woman in front of us is wearing and the distractions keep piling up while we try to listen to God’s word. No wonder it doesn’t sink in! Part of the solution is to plan for plenty of time to get to mass early and pray for a few minutes in the quiet before mass starts. The distractions don’t bother you as much once your emotional state is calm and peaceful.
Another way of looking at the parable of the sower and the seed though, is the different stages of our lives we go through. The seed that fell on the path and the birds ate them up right away could be how we received God’s word as a child. The seed on rocky ground could be how we reacted to God’s word as a teenager. The seed that grew up around thorns that choked them, could be our stressful and busy lives as an adult with a family to raise. But then, the good soil can mean that it is never too late to allow God’s word to grow and flourish within us. Even later in life, we can still allow God’s word to sink in and flourish within us and produce fruits for the Lord that we may have been too busy or distracted to do when we were younger. There have been studies that show the average age for volunteers in the church is about 50 years old, after we have finished raising our families and still have plenty of energy to serve the Lord in our parish and in our communities that we live in.
When we are young, perhaps the fruit we produced was only thirty fold, during midlife it becomes sixty fold and then when our children are grown we have the time to produce fruits for the Lord by one hundredfold. That’s something to think about today. Have we allowed God’s word to really take root and grow during our lives? If not, it’s never to late to do so. Without deciding something specific to do in service to the Lord, the good soil can be overtaken by weeds though, if we aren’t careful.
