Jesus is the Seed (Sunday homily)

The Lord assures us His Word is powerful
and will be effective.
It is a Seed that cannot fail to have its effect.

Yet, stony ground has to be broken up.
As a boy, my father gave me that chore:
to turn over the clods of dirt in his garden
and break them up.
I didn’t like it—I didn’t see the value.

You and I must be soft ground for the Word to sprout.
The Holy Spirit rains down to soften us;
the sufferings Paul speaks of, break us up.

When the Word does sprout,
we have to be out there pulling weeds, day after day.
I hated that job, too;
I wanted to do it once and be done with it.
If only life were so easy!

And when our garden is growing well,
we look around and wonder,
why isn’t the Word sprouting everywhere?
We’ll experience others who, for whatever reason,
will peck like birds at what God is doing in our lives.

That brings us back to what Paul said:
all Creation groans,
because of the damage done to Creation
when Adam and Eve, our first parents, fell into sin.
That changed everything,
and we only have to look around the world
for five minutes to see it’s true.

The Seed is not only the Word,
it is the Word-made-Flesh.
God the Son is the Seed,
sown in our world by God the Father.
When he first grew up, they tried to cut him down;
but He rose up again!

In a moment, Jesus the Word
will be “sown” into our lives in a unique way—
when we receive the Holy Eucharist.
No Seed is more pregnant with life,
more powerful to change our world,
to hasten the day of redemption.

Oh, if only the Seed of the Eucharist
can be sown in ground softened by the dew of the Spirit,
clear of rocks and weeds!
Then what might sprout, forty-, sixty-, and a hundred-fold?