THE HUNDRED, THE SIXTY, The thirty in the sacred seed of God

Faith in fact "is a personal act: It is the free response of man to the initiative of God who reveals himself ". Therefore it is an answer that we give to God and that some days can be more certain and others more insecure.

 

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Dear readers of The island of Patmos,

Summer time is time when many of us often go on vacation, especially in sea destinations. We are unconsciously making an evangelical choice. Indeed, The sea is described in the evangelical passage of This XV Sunday of ordinary time what place where Jesus exposes and explains the parable of the sower. A parable that is a small map for all of us: A small key to reading the life of faith. The sea, so, It is the place where Jesus offers clarity for our path of believers. We could say with the poet Rainer Maria Rilke:

“When my thoughts are anxious, restless and bad, I go by the sea, and the sea drowns them and sends them away with its great wide sounds, purifies them with its noise, And it imposes a rhythm on everything that is disoriented and confused in me ".

The song of the Gospel of today it is mostly composed of a parable, One of the few that Jesus decides to explain directly to the disciples while instead he remains in the form of a narrative for all the others who listen to him by the sea. Jesus uses parables. The disciples ask him why, He replies:

«Because you are given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, But they are not given to them. […] For this I speak to them with parables: because looking at they don't see, By hearing they do not listen and do not understand ".

It looks like a sibylline response. Instead the Lord wants to make it clear the importance of the parable.

I would like to dwell a moment on why. Effectively, The purpose of the parables consists in lighting about the nature of the kingdom and to open up to the understanding of new things, for example on how God acts. The parable is a story based on the rapprochement and comparison of two realities, a real and a fictitious that refer but do not coincide. It contains metaphors that refer to a situation “different "compared to that narrated. In this way the parables push the listeners to an exercise that requires intelligence, fantasy, mental elasticity and reflective ability. In short: It requires everyone to ideally move to the fictitious story to return to reality with a new acquisition. Therefore the parables select daily realities as an element of comparison, and at the same time manifesting their limit to bring out the “ledge” O “surplus” of the reality to which they refer. In this way they operate a passage towards what exceeds the human mind and allow the auditors to expose themselves personally to "the unpublished" and "to the unudied" of God. Thus they become "atmosphere" revelations loving and tender of God and make it in some way more accessible, knowable and attractive for anyone who listens to them[1]

That's why in the parable of the sower We find our life of faith by light. Jesus explains well in detail and offers a phenomenology of the different believers. The seed sown along the road, We could say that it is the non -practicing believer. The seed sown on the stony ground is the believer who is easily prey to easy enthusiasm, inconstant in the time that often goes into crisis, without a definitive choice in faith. The seed sown among the brambles is the distracted believer between the thousand voices of the world and the current culture, moved by good feelings and a good practice of faith, but that then does not easily recognize the sins and vices of the time and thus indulged them. In the end, The seed sown on the good ground that produces one hundred, Sixty and thirty is the believer who believes with strong conviction and strives to be consistent in the practice of faith, but given his fragility he does not always manage to give his best. However, Jesus also accepts those small gestures of faith and charity implemented with tenderness and love.

We can all be one of these believers, from the least fervent to the most fervent. I would also say that each of us can have phases in which he passes from being infonctive seed on the seed road planted on the good ground. These four seeds described by Jesus can also represent a moment of our life of faith, in which we are more arid or more convinced.

Faith in fact "is a personal act: It is the free response of man to the initiative of God who reveals himself " [cf.. CCC 166] Therefore it is an answer that we give to God and that some days can be more certain and others more insecure. To us to always be ready to receive grace for an increasingly firm act of faith.

We ask the Lord to grow in faith, To become a seed of eternal life, A sacred ferment for the whole world, so that we can donate our thirty, sixty, One hundred in the world increasingly orphan than God.

Amen!

Santa Maria Novella in Florence, 16 July 2023

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NOTE

[1] Cfr R. Manes Gospel according to Matteo, Yet, 2019, 197 – 198.

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