For the Salvation of Souls:
A Preacher's Contribution

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There's always something subversive in a parable of Jesus. Jesus starts
with a setting very familiar to his listeners, many of whom may well have
been Jewish peasants who worked hard to coax a harvest from the
inconsistent soil conditions of Palestine. A farmer would scatter the
precious seed carefully, then return with a plow to turn it into the soil. But
Jesus' sower is a prodigal. He seems cavalier, as if he has an unending
supply of seed, and doesn't care where it falls – and then Jesus doesn't
even mention him coming back to do the hard work of tilling the soil! This
makes the punchline an even more shocking surprise to the listeners
gathered along the shore. In a great year, a farmer might expect a ten-fold
yield from his crop; but to get a yield of 30, 60 or even 100-fold would be
nothing short of miraculous! There's something "seedy" going on in this
parable.

The parable tells me something of Jesus' trust in His Father. He was hiking
all around the countryside, freely teaching people, healing them, driving out
demons – in a variety of ways demonstrating the power of the Word of God
made flesh. He demonstrated the generosity of God by encountering all
kinds of people. Maybe the parable addresses the distressing lack of
response. Some thought he was Elijah, or John the Baptist come back from
death, but others, especially the religious and social elites, rejected him
outright, attributing his exorcisms to the prince of demons, not God. How
many people walked away shaking their heads when they heard him
teach, "Love your enemies; offer no resistance to one who is evil"? How
many thought he was a lunatic when he taught, "Blessed are the poor, the
meek, those who mourn, those who suffer persecution because of me"?

Perhaps Jesus had Isaiah's prophecy in mind, and trusted that he himself
was like the rain and snow that comes down from heaven, and his ministry
would achieve the end for which he was sent. Perhaps he trusted that
where his word took root, where people were willing to engage him, trust
him, follow him, great things – miraculous things - would happen.

Jesus' parable doesn't include the second part of sowing seed, the tilling of
the soil. Perhaps it's because people who are rich soil have already
been "turned over" by hardships, heartbreak, or a growing restlessness that
things aren't quite right. Events have taught them humility – they can't do
anything on their own. They're in what's called liminal space; literally
standing at the threshold between one way of being in the world and
another. They have ears to hear the invitation of Jesus to enter into a
relationship with him. Ever since Genesis 2 first told us humanity was
formed from humus (L. for earth), fruitfulness has been related to connection
with God.

My life has changed a lot in the last four years I've worked with the
Catherine of Siena Institute. Simply leaving campus ministry after 12 years
put me on the threshold of many new things: travel, new ideas, new
relationships. But the last year or two in campus ministry, I was
approaching a threshold and didn't recognize it. I remember sitting at my
desk one day, looking over the budget for the next fiscal year, at the $300K
we were projecting to spend, and thinking – to what effect? I began to think
of the students involved in the campus ministry – how few they were to
begin with - but also wondering what impact our ministry – my ministry –
was having on them. I also began wondering how my life was changing.
Besides being older and balder, had I really grown wiser, holier, more
genuine? Was I in any way, bearing fruit 100-, 60- or 30-fold?

In the beginning of my second year with the Institute, Sherry Weddell, my co-
director, and I began focusing on the issue of conversion and discipleship,
the foundation of the whole process of discerning one's gifts. At the same
time I met Daniel, a 33 year-old man who was at every 6:30 am daily Mass,
who had gone through a powerful conversion from drugs and promiscuity to
a living, life-changing relationship with Jesus that to this day guides his daily
decisions and relationships with others. His desire to take Jesus at his
word, and live it fully shook me up. He spoke of Jesus as a living reality,
and the power of his relationship with Jesus and the transformation of his
life as a result of that relationship made me realize two things:

1) I had underestimated what God can do. I realized I really didn't expect
God to change people's lives, including my own. I was acting as though it
were all up to me. So my prayer had become dutiful, rather than heartfelt,
and I approached ministry as though it all depended upon my own
cleverness, insight and hard work. No wonder I didn't see much fruitfulness.

2) I realized that I had given up on the idea of a real, living, uniquely
personal relationship with God, in the Spirit, through Jesus. In that sense, I
wasn't any different from most American Catholics. The Pew Forum Study
on Religion in America published last month, which included 8,000
Catholics, indicated that less than half of Catholics (48%) are certain you
can have a personal relationship with God, and nearly a third (29%) view
God as an "impersonal force." But this explains so much. Only 58% of the
Catholics on the survey said they prayed daily. Why pray, if God is
impersonal? If I don't believe in a personal God, how can I believe he's truly
present, body, soul, and divinity, in the Eucharist? 57% of Catholics never
read the Bible outside the liturgy – why bother if it's not a living expression
of God's relationship with me (or us)?

What's even more startling is how many Catholics are unsettled by this talk
of a personal relationship with Jesus. It's "Protestant," they say. Garbage!
When St. Paul tells the Galatians, "I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me;
insofar as I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who has
loved me and given himself up for me," He isn't talking about abstract
theological principles, he's speaking from experience. Is Catherine of
Siena a crypto-Protestant? Her relationship with God was passionate and
intensely personal. "O unfathomable depth! O Deity eternal! O deep ocean!
What more could You give me than to give me Yourself?" I guess St.
Dominic was some 13th century Billy Graham because he was known to be
always "speaking to God or about God." When Jesus tells his friends, "I am
the vine, you are the branches; Whoever remains in me and I in him will
bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing," (Jn 15:5) he's
using relational language. My relationships with Sherry and Daniel, as well
as Fr. Paul, the wonderful diocesan priest I live with in Colorado Springs
when I'm visiting the Institute office, have been changing me. Or, as Daniel
would remind me, God has been changing me, since "all glory goes to
God." They've just been his seeds. Profound relationships change us; we
will do things for love that law can never compel us to do. And in a loving
relationship we will gladly sacrifice for the other; we will rejoice in the trust
we can place in them; and we will think of our beloved often. We talk about
those we love – if a good friend of ten years has never heard you talk about
your spouse, they would rightly wonder about the quality of your marriage!
So what does it mean when 62% of Catholics seldom or never share their
faith or view of God with any one else? Atheists talk more about God in this
country than Catholics do!

The miraculous yield that the good soil produces flows not from simple
intellectual assent to what Jesus reveals, but from remaining in him –
relating to and with him throughout the day; asking for guidance, putting his
word into action, doing his will, praying to him, expecting him to respond,
thanking him when he does. The miraculous yield is part of the life of a
disciple. This is the life each of us is invited to live, with the help of God's
grace and the Holy Spirit. I want to change – or, rather – be changed. It is a
challenge; I'm so used to doing things on my own – and taking Jesus
seriously is seriously difficult – you know, the whole "love your enemies, do
not fear, let your yes mean yes" stuff is impossible to do on your own. But I
am slowly growing in trust, and I am praying for daily conversion; not for the
sake of becoming fruitful, I hope, but simply for the sake of knowing Jesus.
The abundant fruitfulness Jesus anticipates is the result of conversion,
whether dramatic or gradual. That fruitfulness might be a dramatic vocation
that changes people's lives, like Mother Teresa. It might be a life of simple
holiness filled with the fruits of the Spirit that evangelizes others, as in the
case of Daniel, who's evangelized me.

Bare soil is passive potentiality; it just lies there. Without Jesus, we can do
nothing; at least nothing that will have lasting, much less eternal, value. But
the relationship we begin here with Jesus, made possible by the Holy Spirit,
is, as St. Paul promises, the firstfruits of the eternal relationship promised
us in heaven. And those who have tasted those firstfruits groan with longing
for the fullness they hint at. Jesus knew that those who accepted his Word –
accepted HIM – would be marvelously fruitful. He also knew that fruit
produces seeds of it own. So those who remain in Jesus as a branch on a
vine, who allow him to live in them as he lived in St. Paul, become seeds,
scattered by the Lord throughout the world. Perhaps they are ejected by
three out of four people. But for the fourth, they become an actual grace –
an invitation to conversion and relationship with Jesus that extends beyond
time. As Daniel, Sherry, Fr. Paul, and many others have been for the little
patch of humus that's me. Who have been the seeds planted in your life by
Jesus? How many people's lives hang in the balance as they wait for you to
commit yourself to following Jesus?

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