The parable of the sower

 

By Fr. Roy Cimagala *

WHAT lessons does the parable of the sower (cfr. Mk 4,1-20) teach us? I suppose there are many. But one of them, for sure, is that we have to be prudent in our efforts to do a lot of good in our life, and that this virtue of prudence in the end is a matter of carefully listening and following the will of God. 

That, in a sense, is the formula for a prodigious harvest at the end of our life, a harvest that goes beyond our natural limits, since it is a harvest that can give us some supernatural reward, nothing less than being united with God for all eternity in heaven!

We have to be clear about what is to be and to do good. Nowadays, we have all sorts of ideas about what can be considered good that in the end are actually not or at best a good that does not go all the way. Being and doing good is nothing other than being with God and doing the will of God. (cfr. James 1,17; Ps 16,2)

We should make the necessary effort to know God’s will thoroughly and abidingly, and to do that as promptly as possible. We have to understand that to be with God is to do his will. To be part of God’s family is to do his will. (cfr. Mt 12,50)

To be sure, this will require periods of study of our Christian faith, and the many other practices of piety that can truly help us to be in God’s presence all throughout the day even as we immerse in our mundane and temporal affairs. Such effort should give rise to many virtues, and prudence should be one of them.

In that parable of the sower, we are told about the many grounds the seed, which represents the word and the will of God, fell. We have to see to it that that seed falls on the proper ground which means that we, first of all, should put ourselves in the proper if not the best condition to follow God’s will.

We have to be wary of the danger of being carried away by some worldly forces, both the good and the bad ones, the favorable and the unfavorable ones, that would take us away from God. 

And in the world today, this danger is not only present in a passive way, but is active in affecting us. We should try our best not to be swept away by them, confused and lost. And again, this is a matter of being with God, strengthening our faith, hope and charity.

In this regard we cannot overemphasize the need to spend time for prayer and contemplation in a way that would help us keep a deeply spiritual and supernatural bearing. God should be the center and focus of our life. Everything that happens in our life should be referred to him, no matter how technical and temporal in nature only.

We should never forget that God is in everything and that everything has to be referred to him. Yes, even the devil and all forms of evil should be referred to God, because only then can we deal with them properly.

With this kind of prudence, we can expect, as the parable explains, a prodigious fruitfulness and harvest at the end of our life that leads us to our eternal life with God in heaven.

* Chaplain Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE), Talamban, Cebu City

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com