Daily Reflection for Wednesday, January 29, 2020
Peace and Blessings, Friends and Parishioners,
We encourage you to reflect on Wednesday’s readings at this link:
http://usccb.org/bible/readings/012920.cfm
If you prefer to use your own Bible, the readings are:
First Reading: 2 Samuel 7: 4-17
Responsorial: Psalm 89: 4-5, 27-28, 29-30
Gospel: Mark 4: 1-20
Our reflection on Wednesday’s readings:
“And some seed fell on rich soil and produced fruit. It came up and grew and yielded thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold.” Mark 4: 8.
This is at least the third time the Parable of the Sower is the Gospel reading on the day I’m scheduled to write a reflection. I’m lucky for that because I learn slowly, even when Jesus provides an explanation of the parable. Jesus said, “Do you not understand this parable? Then how will you understand any of the parables?” Mark 4: 13.
Even though I’ve read the parable many times…even the explanation…I still did not understand. The explanation is included in all three synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke). It must be important. Yet I did not fully understand.
But maybe I can learn and maybe I can gain understanding, thus allowing further understanding of God, life, love, truth and me.
In explaining the parable, Jesus tells us the seed sown by the sower is the word of God, and as written in 1 Peter 1: 23-25, we have “been born anew from imperishable seed through the living and abiding word of God” that “remains forever.”
I am the soil, the receptacle for the seed. What happens to the word of God when it is sown in me? Will it bear fruit?
Fr. Richard Rohr tells us that we are human beings, not human doings. For me to bear fruit, I must first be the fertile rich soil. When I think of soil, I don’t think of soil doing anything. It lies there, or it may get tilled, dug, weeded, moved, watered and fertilized. On first glance, the soil is just lying there doing nothing. But it is teeming with life, with nutrients, with bacteria and microbes. Ready to produce.
Soil must be replenished. Sometimes it needs to lie fallow so that it can produce and bear fruit. It must be.
Similarly, sometimes, I need to simply be. Allow the imperishable, the eternal word of God to be the seed in me. In the introduction to the Gospel of John we are told that “In the beginning was the Word…and the Word was God.” John 1: 1.
Lord, please help me to be the fertile soil.
Peace and blessings,
Al Mytty