On that day, Jesus went out of the house and sat down by the sea. Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat down, and the whole crowd stood along the shore. And he spoke to them at length in parables, saying: "A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky ground, where it had little soil. It sprang up at once because the soil was not deep, and when the sun rose it was scorched, and it withered for lack of roots. Some seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it. But some seed fell on rich soil and produced fruit, a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold. Whoever has ears ought to hear."
Homily
Commenting on this parable, St. John Chrysostom writes: “The fact that the greater part of the seed perished was not due to the sower but to the soil, that is, the mind. The sower made no distinction between rich and poor, wise or foolish, but spoke to all alike.” St. John also noted how non-judgmental the parable is: “He does not judge them and say, 'This is what the lazy received and they lost it. This is what the rich got and they choked it. This is what the careless got and they neglected it.'”
Another ancient commentator writes: “The wayside is the mind hardened by evil thoughts; the rocks are the hardness of the self-willed mind; but the good soil is the gentleness of the attentive mind.”
Look carefully at the word ‘mind’ and we can make two useful distinctions: the active and the passive mind. The active is the analytical mind, the passive is the contemplative. Today the active mind gets all the praise, while the passive or contemplative mind is usually ignored.
Passive means receptive or listening. Do you remember the last time you tried to have a conversation with someone who never listens? Perhaps you both talked a lot, but there was no conversation, because your minds weren’t engaged with each other. In the absence of the contemplative mind, everything feels disconnected and chaotic.
Meister Eckhart wrote: “When God begins a specific work, the mind must remain passive.” A disciple of Jesus is someone who receives the seed of God’s word in good soil. Soil comes from the Latin humus. We get the words human and humility from this word. Eckhart goes on to reminds us, “God cannot work except in the ground of humility, because the deeper we are in humility, the more receptive we are to God.”
The words passive and humble are not very popular today. In fact, a lot of people would be offended if these two words were used to describe them. But try to imagine someone who is void of passivity and humility. That person would be the poster child for the Ego.
We live in a noisy world. The noise of machines is hard to bear, but far more deafening is the human voice. It’s almost impossible to escape from it, because today we have the technology to store, multiply, amplify and broadcast the human voice until it fills every aspect of our lives. I heard recently of a new magazine that advertised itself as “opinionated.” This word means “obstinate, conceited, thinking too highly of, or adhering persistently to, one’s opinions.” How bizarre that this word should be used to advertise a magazine! How many people would like to brag at having a friend or relative who is “opinionated”? And yet it’s regarded as a desirable quality in a magazine.
We are living in a very strange world now--a world that values opinionated individuals above contemplative and humble individuals. How will the word of God penetrate our noisy world under these conditions?
Do not be afraid of silence. Do not run away from the virtue of humility. Take time every day to sit quietly and contemplate God and his eternal Word that has been sown in your mind. Give the Seed of his Truth every possible advantage to germinate and grow and produce good fruit in your life. If you do this, you will discover just how truly rich and blessed you are.