Reflection for the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Matthew 13: 1-23

How appropriate that today’s readings for Mass are about seeds and harvest.

The majority of us probably buy our food from the supermarket. But how can we not bear in mind, these muggy, steamy days of July, our sisters and brothers laboring in fields under the blazing sun, bent over long rows of vegetables, harvesting them for the rest of us? How can we not think of the long-haul truck drivers longing to be home and school children sitting at roadside stands selling their parents’ crops? The followers of Jesus who heard His stories of seeds and crops, bad soil and rocky ground surely would have understood what He was talking about–both on the natural level and in the spiritual point He was making about hearing the Word of God with an open heart. Today we think of those who sustain us by their labor, and we ponder the spiritual food given to us in the readings at Sunday Mass each week.

It’s too easy to hear the readings, even our Priest’s well-planned homilies, then leave church with all the concerns of daily life gradually blocking out the memory of the seeds planted in us by the Living Word of God we’ve just heard. Today Jesus doesn’t want that to happen. His graphic words make the mysteries clear:  He plants the seeds of Truth in us and waters them with all the Graces needed to bring them to fruit in us. Our experience of listening to the Word of God in Scripture makes us fit to draw closer to God in our daily lives, in the real moments of this earthly existence.

Let us ask Him to till the soil of our hearts. Implore Him to let the seeds of His love find a home in our souls. Beseech Him to open the floodgates of His Grace lest drought wither the good He would have us do, having celebrated the Sacred Mysteries each week at Holy Mass. Let us be fruitful and abundant and grow in holiness this week and every day thereafter, lest the Lord of the Harvest come to us and find only weeds….

God bless your dear hearts today and always. Thank you for your faith. Thank you for being serious about your call to holiness, else you would not be reading this. Be assured of the prayers of the Sisters of Charity for you and your loved ones, whether you are shopping in the crowded supermarket or harvesting crops for us.  We are One in the Lord Jesus Christ.