A Homily for the Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Readings: Isaiah 55:10-11 Romans 8:18-23 Matthew 13:1-23
Historians have noted how often popes die from common colds because Vatican officials refuse to divulge how ill pontiffs truly are. Evidently, change comes slowly in the Eternal City, because an example so extreme as to be silly is offered by the historian Mary Beard in the July 3 edition of The New Yorker.
Upon their deaths, Roman emperors were thought to become divine. Their souls ascended to heaven as their bodies were publicly cremated. Onlookers often insisted that they had seen as much. But the 211 C.E. funeral of Septimius Severus involved a great deal of improvisation, even dissimulation, because the emperor died at York, in northern England. Due to the distance, only his ashes were returned to Rome. Waxworks were sometimes used to cover imperial bodies, deemed unfit for display on the funeral pyre. In this instance, a waxwork was first charged with the duty of dying for the emperor. Beard writes:
According to Herodian, the waxwork was displayed for a week on a couch at the entrance to the palace, “looking like a sick man,” with the whole Senate in attendance. Every day, doctors would come and pretend to examine the model Emperor and agree that his condition was deteriorating, until they eventually pronounced him dead, at which point the waxwork was taken to the Forum.
Change comes slowly in the Eternal City, but it is sluggish for most of us as well. God’s word is supposed to achieve the end for which it was sent, though Jesus cautions us that this depends, in great measure, upon the sort of soil it hits. God does the seeding, but we are told to tend the soil.
You cannot be faulted for what you cannot see—unless, however, you refuse to look.
Until the advent of grace, we presume that we are quite fertile, ready to hear whatever God might want to say, already responding to the revelation that we encounter in the church’s holy writ.
You cannot be faulted for what you cannot see—unless, however, you refuse to look. Here are seven signs that your soil needs tending.
1) Anger. We often become angry when we feel stymied, unable to control what is happening in the world as we perceive it. But if anger is your rather constant companion, do you really believe that God’s word will achieve the end for which it was sent? That things will be O.K. for you and for your world? Or do you need to renew your faith in the efficacy of God’s word?
2) Enemies. We all disappoint each other; we fail each other; and we sin against each other. But an enemy is something else, something more. It is a fixation. If you have a list of enemies, you are hardened ground when it comes to responding to God’s word because you no longer expect that God can or will act.
3) You do not hunger for more. St. Augustine addressed God in his Confessions:
I tasted you, and now I hunger and thirst; you touched me, and I burned for your peace.
When we have encountered God’s word, we have known its power. We naturally hunger for more. If you are not yearning for a fresh encounter with God’s word, something has gone sterile within you. It has been too long since you have been fed.
4) Fear of silence. Smartphones are only the latest manifestation of a phenomenon that began with the transistor radio. Why do you avoid being alone with your thoughts? What are you afraid of? So much screen time is wasted time. Nothing can come of it. And we pity the ancient Romans for pretending that a wax figure was their emperor!
5) Exhaustion. Subterfuge saps our strength. Running will wear you out. If you are exhausted, maybe too much energy is expended in avoiding your own life, your own need of God’s word. If you cannot pick up a Bible and sit still, cannot make your way into the silence of a weekday church, winged things are devouring God’s seed before you can be nourished. Remember, God always gives back, with interest, time that we pass in prayer.
Are you fertile or fugitive? Are you ready to hear, or ready with excuses?
6) Yesterday and tomorrow, but never today. You are convinced that your life took a wrong turn. Yes, lives do that, but you cannot go back. You can only find your way forward. Yesterday is gone forever. Tomorrow never comes. There is only today, and it is today that the living God speaks to you. One must be present to hear. Today is the day that the Lord has made! (Ps 118:24).
7) Spurning the sacraments. They are God’s promises of self. “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Mt 18:20). “Whose sins you shall forgive are forgiven” (Jn 20:23). But you have convinced yourself that Eucharist and confession are not what you need. Not until your life changes and you have things in order. Or not until the church changes. The church and its ministers have never not needed to change, but each of us must still look to our own ground. How right our Lord was when he warned of weeds in our minds! Why do we shelter the vile things?
God’s word will achieve the end for which it was sent, but we are the ground that must be readied for the seed. Are you fertile or fugitive? Are you ready to hear, or ready with excuses?
