Sowing the Seed of Truth

Sowing the Seed of Truth
 
‘O God, who show the light of your truth to those who go astray, so that they may return to the right path, give all…the grace to reject whatever is contrary to the name of Christ and to strive after all that does it honour.’ (Collect)

Yesterday, on my way driving to home, I was listening to ‘Summer with Greta’ on Radio 4. The young climate activist shares with us the story of her past tumultuous year. I was struck by an image, particularly, while driving my car. ‘Space is our ocean, and our planet is our boat. Our only boat.’ On my journey, back from Cambridge, I was drawn to her passion about saving Planet Earth. She kept repeating, it is not she who is important but the message. She only wants people to take the crisis seriously, as crisis. He keeps us warning, though she adds recurringly,‘nobody listens’, and it is so important to listen till there is time. 

What made me think, from the point of view of faith, is similarity to the crisis of faith. The two, as Pope Francis warns, run parallel, and actually, the ecological crisis is rooted in humankind’s broken relationship with God. If faith -friendship with God -disappears, our moral defense system vanishes. With the worship of God that strength disappears with which we could say no to mindless consumption, violence, social injustice, harm to nature, to our fellow human beings, and to ourselves. Sailing through the dangereous waters, prayer is our only boat, faith is our only boat, God is our only boat: our friendship with God is our only boat. 

A similar campaign should sweep through our unexamined life as a society. The same passion for saving our friendship with God should be exhibited by all the baptized, like the commitment of young Greta. There is something Christ-like in her passion, in her single-mindedness. Thereis a connection between her prophetic voice, and that of our Lord, who is our judge. ‘Thus says the Lord: “As the rain and the snow come down from the heavens and do not return without watering the earth, making it yield and giving growth to provide seed for the sower and bread for the eating, so the word that goes from my mouth does not return to me empty, without carrying out my will and succeednd in what it was sent to.”’ (Isaiah 55:10-11)

So, in view of the parable of the sower in today’s Gospel, let us think about, what are the ways of clinging to this fertile Word? What should we do, on a daily basis, that ‘the glory of God might be revealed in our lives’, that truth, care and justice for one another and the created world, for which ‘the whole creation is eagerly wating for God to reveals his sons’? 
What is your daily form of sowing the seed? What are these conscious practices, as part of your moral and spiritual life? For what Jesus implies in his parable, that our relationship with the word of God should be conscious. It should be regular, something daily, as our daily bread. 

​Young Greta, and you can listen to her diary, helps us to see the prophetic strength of Jesus. What we can also see and recognize is the strength of this love. Let us listen again to his words, as the sustenance which will enable us to live and witness to Him in a more conscious way; on a daily basis. ‘You will listen and listen again, but not understand, see and see again, but not perceive. For the heart of this nation has grown coarse, their ears are dull of hearing, and they have shut their eyes, for fear they should see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their heart, and be converted and be healed by me. ‘But happy are your eyes because they see, your ears because they hear! I tell you solemnly, many prophets and holy men longed to see what you see, and never saw it; to hear what you hear, and never heard it.’ (https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000kwcc)
 
12.07.2020