By Archbishop Thomas Wenski - The Archdiocese of Miami
Archbishop Thomas Wenski preached this homily at the 14th annual Napa Institute Conference held July 26, 2024, in Napa, California.
Today’s gospel presents us with Matthew’s version of the parable of the sower. One of the better known of Jesus’ parables, it is found in Mark’s and Luke’s gospel as well. It might be better described as the “parable of the four soils” or four types of ground.
There is soil found along the wayside, this is ground hardened by heavy traffic. Today, you wouldn’t find anything growing in the middle of a busy road. And that would be true of Jesus’ time as well. There is also stony ground or soil likewise not a favorable environment for anything to grow. Farmers would know first to remove the rocks and stones from any field before planting; the same would be true for thorny ground, or a field that is too kind to weeds. The seed of the gospel takes root in good soil.
Today we celebrate the feast of St. Ann and St. Joachim, the parents of Mary – and grandparents of Jesus. We know little about them – the Scriptures do not speak of them. But we can infer many things because of their daughter, Mary. Ann and Joachim, like Zachariah and Elizabeth, were the rich soil in which the seed of God’s word brought forth a rich harvest.
A Haitian proverb says mango a pa tonbe lwen pye mango a: the mango doesn’t fall far from the tree. So as Jesus says on another occasion, “by their fruits you will know them,” we can say that we know Ann and Joachim by their fruit, their daughter chosen by God to be the mother of the Savior.
The world is the field that the Church is sent to cultivate by sowing the Word, the good news of the gospel. And every soul is potentially “good soil” for the gospel to take root. The farmer or gardener has to water the dry, hard ground. Hearts must be softened; the stony ground of stubborn hearts must be tilled to prepare it to receive the seed of the gospel. Weeds can spring up anywhere – for the Evil one is always at work - but for the seed, the wheat of the gospel, to take root, the soil must be prepared.
In other words, evangelization is hard work just as a farmer if he is going to realize a good harvest cannot take shortcuts, neither can we in our efforts to plant the gospel in “good soil”. If we are to sow in good soil, we have to tame the wild ground: in other words, just as a farmer before he plants has to prepare the soil, the soil of the human heart, the soil of the culture in which we live, needs some serious preparation: what missiologists would call "pre-evangelization".
In the last 60 years, since the Second Vatican Council, each Pope has successively addressed the need for a New Evangelization that can respond to the new circumstances in which we live. We can talk, as Saint Paul VI did, about the ascendant secularism of our culture, the mistaken sense of tolerance that is intolerant of the gospel especially when the gospel seemingly “judges” one’s lifestyle choices; we can reference, as Saint John Paul II did, the growing indifferentism, a religious relativism that holds the every religion is as good as the other and thus stifles missionary fervor; we can speak about what Benedict XVI called the “dictatorship of relativism” or what Pope Francis decries as the “globalization of indifference” of our throw-away cultures.
In the spiritual deserts of our post-modern culture created by relativism and other secularist ideologies, we have to prepare the human heart and the culture that forms it by showing it that our basic human desires for security, for love and for acceptance find their fulfillment only in God. We need to re-propose to people the fundamental questions of life such as: Why do I exist? Where does everything come from? Why is the world the way it is? What is my purpose in this world?
In spite of everything, all is not lost. While we do see decay, stagnation and complacency in the Church, we also see signs of renewed vitality, new energy and a new creativity. Last week’s Eucharistic Congress is a stellar example of this new energy, vitality and creativity.
The ground is being prepared for a new Springtime of Faith. St. John Paul II did much to renew catechesis, the Catechism of the Catholic Church was a great achievement, among so many others, of his pontificate. Benedict XVI in his profound writings and homilies have helped translate the ancient Kerygma of the Church into a new idiom. And, speaking of Pope Francis, how many people of other faiths or of no faith have told you, “I like this Pope”?
Pope Francis takes as a common point of reference those Gospel values that non-believers and “indifferent Christians” of good will accept even if unconsciously. These values emphasize concern for the poor and the oppressed. Concern for the poor brings out a natural religious sense because such concern conforms to the transcendent character of the human person. So, I would suggest that the pope’s obvious concern for the refugees, his visits to prisons, his outreach to the homeless around St. Peter’s are concrete instances of a “pre-evangelization” that can break open soil hardened by cynicism to receive the good seed of the gospel. As the Bishops of Vatican II said in Gaudium et Spes, the same hopes, joys, grief and anguish are shared by the people of the world and the followers of Christ.
Jesus spoke his parables in a land that always presented challenges to farmers. And those who have visited the Holy Land in recent years can marvel on how the Israelis have reclaimed what was barren desserts, transforming wastelands into orchards. Perhaps, this itself is a modern-day parable of how our modern-day spiritual desserts can be irrigated by God’s grace and the spade work of truly “missionary disciples” who don’t shrink from the hard work of evangelization. And turn by their labor the dry, the rocky, the thorny or sandy soil into the rich soil of the “ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.”
