Friday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Seed Bearing Fruit?
Liturgical Cycle: A | Lectionary Cycle: II
Introduction
Year II. Jeremiah asks the people to repent and not to rely on false securities. They have to return to God, under the leadership of good shepherds.
Gospel. When he began to tell the parable of the sower, Jesus said, “Listen.” When Matthew explains it and adapts it to his community, we are told again: “Hear.” We have to listen to the parable and see how it applies to ourselves. By listening, we also have to listen to the signs of our time, how the word of Christ the sower applies to our time and our people, that the word may be accepted and bear fruit.
Opening Prayer
Lord our God,
Your Son Jesus opened the ears of the deaf
and gave sight to the blind.
Make us listen to the message of good news,
attune us to his voice and his silence,
open especially our hearts
to all the light and love and hope
that appeals to us in what he says to us.
Give us also the courage
to speak and to live as we believe,
that his word may succeed in us.
We ask this in the name of Jesus the Lord.
First Reading
Come back, faithless people —the Lord says— because I am your master. I will choose one from a city and two from a family and bring you to Zion.
Then I will give you shepherds who are after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding.
And when you increase and multiply in the land in those days —the Lord says— people will no longer speak of the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord; it will no longer be remembered or missed, nor shall it be made again!
Then they will call Jerusalem ‘The Throne of the Lord,’ and they will no longer follow the stubbornness of their wicked hearts.
Responsorial Psalm
R. (see 10d) The Lord will guard us as a shepherd guards his flock.
Hear the word of the LORD, O nations,
proclaim it on distant isles, and say:
He who scattered Israel, now gathers them together,
he guards them as a shepherd his flock.
R. The Lord will guard us as a shepherd guards his flock.
The LORD shall ransom Jacob,
he shall redeem him from the hand of his conqueror.
Shouting, they shall mount the heights of Zion,
they shall come streaming to the LORD’s blessings:
The grain, the wine, and the oil,
the sheep and the oxen.
R. The Lord will guard us as a shepherd guards his flock.
Then the virgins shall make merry and dance,
and young men and old as well.
I will turn their mourning into joy,
I will console and gladden them after their sorrows.
R. The Lord will guard us as a shepherd guards his flock.
Alleluia Verse
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Blessed are they who have kept the word with a generous heart
and yield a harvest through perseverance.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Explanation of the Parable of the Sower
Hear then the parable of the sower.
When someone hears the message of the kingdom but doesn’t take it seriously, the devil comes and takes away what was sown in his heart. This is the seed that fell along the footpath.
The seed that falls on rocky ground represents the person who hears the word and immediately accepts it with joy.
But such a person has no roots and only lasts for a short time. As soon as he is harassed or persecuted because of the word, he gives up.
The seed that falls among the thistles is the one who hears the word but then gets distracted by the worries of life and the love of money, which choke the word so it does not produce fruit.
As for the seed that falls on good soil, it is the one who hears the word and understands it; this seed bears fruit and produces a hundred, sixty, or thirty times more.”
Prayers of the Faithful
– That the Church may reflect very much on the word of God and discover how it applies in the situation of God’s People in our day, we pray:
– That we may see the word of God as a call personally addressed to each of us to respond to God’s love, we pray:
– That all of us may meditate often on the word of God, love it and let it be our guide, we pray:
Prayer over the Gifts
We bring before you, Lord God,
the fruit of the seed you let the farmer sow
and to which you gave growth.
Let this bread bring us the life
of your beloved Son Jesus,
and may this wine from our hills
bring us hope and his lasting joy.
We ask this in the name of Jesus our Lord.
Prayer after Communion
Lord our God,
people hunger today for a word
of truth, authenticity,
and of the deeper meaning of life.
Open them to your good news,
fill our stammering words
with your word of life
and teach us to sow your word among them
in a language they understand,
especially the language of hope and love
of our Christian living.
We ask this in the name of Jesus the Lord.
Blessing
God sows his word among us. Let it fall in good soil. He wants us to continue sowing his word. We ask him to dispose people well so that they are receptive to that word. May almighty God bless you, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
REFLECTIONS
Matthew 13:18-23
Remember that we discussed this passage on Sunday, July 16. This parable about the seed and the sower has been the focus of the Church’s reflection for the past three days. This alone shows the importance of this parable. While the parable focuses on the sower, the interpretation focuses on the soil.
This parable reflects the early Church’s experiences with spreading the Gospel. The four types of soil represent four kinds of responses from people to God’s Word. Matthew might have been illustrating how people responded to Jesus’ words when he actually spoke to them.
It aims to give disciples an understanding of the difficulties that God’s Word encounters in everyone. The soil type determines the results, not the seed or the sower. It is not talking about four categories of people but about four interior dispositions found in everyone. The soil on the roadside, rocky ground, thorn bushes, and fertile soil are all found in the same person. No one is completely bad, just as no one is perfectly good. We must work on those areas with shallow soil to prepare the ideal ground for the Gospel.
The Gospel calls on us to reflect on our dispositions. I will borrow the explanations of Fr. Armellini on the seeds that fell on the road and the birds came and ate them.
A road or a path is where everyone walks. Seeds do not penetrate the paths because everyone treads on the soil and has become hardened. It means that we give in to everyone’s way of thinking, reasoning, and valuing things as everyone does. And this voice of everyone is often not in tune with the Gospel voice. Whenever we follow what everyone says, even if the Gospel message reaches our ears, it cannot penetrate our hearts because everyone’s logic hardens the ground.
It’s time for the birds to arrive. The Bible talks a lot about birds. Birds of prey appear in Genesis chapter 15 as symbols of pagan peoples trying to divert Israel from the covenant with the Lord. What do these birds of prey represent today? There are a thousand distractions, permissiveness, nonsense circulating on our smartphones, and fashions that make us lose our minds.... And we unwittingly give up the message of the Gospel to the birds.