They may look but not see, and hear but not understand

22 SEPTEMBER (Lk 8,4-15)

Jesus speaks of the kingdom of God by telling parables, apparently quite simple; in reality, they are full of the mystery of salvation which is accomplished in time. The mystery must always be announced with great prudence, wisdom, and intelligence in the Holy Spirit. There are bad, evil, and dishonest hearts ready to use every word uttered by Jesus to accuse, condemn, and stone him instantly.

For these hearts the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled. They listen but do not understand, they see but it is as if they had not seen anything. If their heart were not hardened, these could understand and see the depths of the mystery. Here is Isaiah:
Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?” “Here I am,” I said; “send me!” And he replied: Go and say to this people: Listen carefully, but you shall not understand! Look intently, but you shall know nothing! You are to make the heart of this people sluggish, to dull their ears and close their eyes; Else their eyes will see, their ears hear, their heart understand, and they will turn and be healed. “How long, O Lord?” I asked. And he replied: Until the cities are desolate, without inhabitants, Houses, without a man, and the earth is a desolate waste. Until the LORD removes men far away, and the land is abandoned more and more. If there be still a tenth part in it, then this in turn shall be laid waste; As with a terebinth or an oak whose trunk remains when its leaves have fallen. (Holy offspring is the trunk.) (Is 6,8-13).

The kingdom of God is an ineffable, big, and huge mystery. It comes from the seeding of God’s Word in the hearts. Kingdom and word are one, as one is the seed and the tree that comes out of it. Without seeds, there are no trees, and without the Word of God never might there be the kingdom of God. The kingdom is the word that was sown, welcomed and lived.

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.

As the seed needs good soil to grow and produce good fruit, so this also applies to the seed of the Word. The Word produces if it falls on a good, and free heart, without preconceptions, loving true wisdom, eager to satiate himself of most pure truth. A heart full of sins, vices, transgression of the commandments, is a soil the Word of the Lord can never take root in. It needs to be tilled with a beautiful conversion. Everything is from the conversion and without it never might the kingdom come out in a heart. Sin will always work the rejection of the Word and this will never produce. This truth is often forgotten by the sowers of the Word. These sometimes do not even sow the Word. They go around spreading human theories, thoughts of the earth, man’s theologies and philosophies, psychologies, and ways of this world. It is as if a farmer wanted to have a nice field of wheat, but he sows only grains of sand in his field. This will never become good wheat, and so it is with our word of the earth.

Virgin Mary, Mother of the Redemption, Angels, and Saints give us the true Word of Jesus.