Fifteenth Sunday In Ordinary Time (Year A)

Isa 55.10-11;  
Rom 8.18-23;  
Mt 13.1-23

LET GO OF YOUR FEARS, GOD IS WITH YOU

The three readings at today’s mass are all about God’s revelation of himself to us. Through the words of the prophet Isaiah, God tells us that his words are powerful, and that his revelation is not powerless and empty: “The word that goes from my mouth does not return to me empty, without carrying out my will and succeeding in what it was sent to do.” And, of course, we know that that word of God was revealed most fully when He took human flesh. The Son of God, His Word made flesh, reveals the eternal Father to us in a way that the prophets, the priests, and the kings of the Old Testament could not do, as He Himself said in last week’s gospel: “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”

The revelation of God the Father by God the Son is so perfect that it eclipses all previous revelation and precludes the possibility of any subsequent revelation: “It is fulfilled,” He said before He died. He came to give His life for us, to redeem us from our sin; and He came, as He said, to reveal the Father to us. The eternal Father, God almighty – how could we begin to understand him who created us and sustains our very existence if he had not chosen to reveal himself? And he chose to reveal himself in the way that we could best understand – by humbling himself and becoming like us, in all things but sin. He took human flesh and was born of the Virgin Mary in order to become the Son, in decree to reveal his true nature to us. And all this was done entirely out of love for us, his creation.

God gives us signs day after day, night after night, trying to get our attention. We all know that one of the main ways that Our Lord used in this revelation, in His teaching about God, about the kingdom of heaven, about how we should respond, was through His use of parables, and comparisons to explain certain features of the Kingdom which He has come to establish. And we have just read the very familiar parable of the sower. Its direct message that some seeds will do better than others would be appreciated by those who heard Him.

This is why His disciples ask Jesus to explain to them why He uses parables when He teaches the crowds, and why He gives the explanation only to a much smaller group. We must remember that these parables are about the kind of Kingdom which He has come to establish, and that does not fit in well with the Judaism of his time, largely because of the earthbound, nationalistic idea of the Messiah that the people had.
One has to shade one’s eyes to see things if the sun is too bright; otherwise, one is blinded and sees nothing. In a similar way, parables help to shade supernatural brightness in order to allow the listener to grasp the meaning without being blinded by it.
What Christ says here underlines our responsibility to be ready to accept God’s grace and to respond to it. He refers to the words of Isaiah who prophesies that hardness of heart which is a punishment meted out to those who resist grace.

God gives grace, and man is free to respond to that grace. The result is that those who respond generously receive additional grace and so grow steadily in grace and holiness; whereas those who reject God’s gifts become closed up within themselves; through their selfishness and attachment to sin they eventually lose God’s grace entirely. Thus, our Lord gives us a clear warning: with the full weight of his divine authority he exhorts us – without taking away our freedom – to act responsibly: the gifts that God keeps giving us should yield fruit; we must take advantage of all the opportunities for our sanctification which are offered to us in the course of our lives.

You and I must therefore recognize Him when we listen, look, see, pause, and observe, and, yes, point His presence out for one another through our acts of kindness, patience, and perseverance. So Let go of your fear, God is behind it all!

Fr Joseph Osho