Whoever has ears to hear ought to hear
20 SEPTEMBER (Lk 8,4-15)
Who must the Gospel be given to? To all. To every man. In every time. Without any distinction. The Missionary of the Lord Jesus was not given any power to discern to whom to give and to whom not to give the Gospel. But he was sent around the world to give the Gospel to every creature and to make all men disciples of Jesus. To the missionary is due the responsibility of sowing in every heart the glorious Gospel of God. The very serious responsibility of accepting it belongs to men. If he does not accept it he will be responsible for ever of the gift refused. He had been opened the gates of life and he chose to follow paths of death.
The Parable of the Sower that goes out and that sows his good seed on every soil, on the road, among the rocks, among the thorns and finally on good ground; is told by Jesus right to his own Missionaries. To give them hope, assurance and guarantee. The seed scattered by them will not remain fruitless. They will not work in vain. If three-quarters of the seed get lost, a quarter produces in abundance. This Parable is to instil an infinite certainty in their hearts. Even in the place which apparently seems hard granite, there is a good angle of soil on which then a good fruit will ripen. The grace of God always works when the Word is sown.
The Sower must always remember that God will never guarantee the word of a man. This will always be fruitless. He will only guarantee his Word. Only to his Gospel he will add the grace of conversion of hearts. Often if a lot of conversion is not done, it is not because God is missing in his promise to accompany the gift of the Gospel with his Holy Spirit, but because the preacher does not say but man’s words, words of the earth and words of death. Now never might God fertilize of eternal life a word that is of death. Never might he transform a word of darkness into light. This truth must always enlighten the mind of the Missionary of the Gospel.
When a large crowd gathered, with people from one town after another journeying to him, he spoke in a parable. “A sower went out to sow his seed. And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path and was trampled, and the birds of the sky ate it up. Some seed fell on rocky ground, and when it grew, it withered for lack of moisture. Some seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew with it and choked it. And some seed fell on good soil, and when it grew, it produced fruit a hundredfold.” After saying this, he called out, “Whoever has ears to hear ought to hear.” Then his disciples asked him what the meaning of this parable might be. He answered, “Knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of God has been granted to you; but to the rest, they are made known through parables so that ‘they may look but not see, and hear but not understand.’ “This is the meaning of the parable. The seed is the word of God. Those on the path are the ones who have heard, but the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts that they may not believe and be saved. Those on rocky ground are the ones who, when they hear, receive the word with joy, but they have no root; they believe only for a time and fall away in time of trial. As for the seed that fell among thorns, they are the ones who have heard, but as they go along, they are choked by the anxieties and riches and pleasures of life, and they fail to produce mature fruit. But as for the seed that fell on rich soil, they are the ones who, when they have heard the word, embrace it with a generous and good heart, and bear fruit through perseverance.
Gospel and understanding of it are through a most pure gift of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit that brings together man and the Missionary of the Gospel. But it is also the Holy Spirit that gives understanding to the heart and to the spirit of the Word that have been sown. Who does the Spirit of the Lord give this understanding or intelligence or wisdom of the Word to? He gives it to whoever is humble, meek and pure at heart. To whoever longs to know the Lord and his truth. To whoever is willing to get converted in order to begin a new journey in self-denial to be a true disciple of Lord Jesus. On the contrary, to whoever is arrogant, conceited, to whoever is believed to be wise and intelligent this grace is denied and the light of the Gospel goes out forever. He stays out of the understanding and intelligence of the Word and he gets lost.
Virgin Mary, Mother of the Redemption, Angels and Saints make us small, humble and children.