Sexagesima Sunday 15.2.09 Robust disciples
The parable of the Sower gives us a spectrum of possible responses to the call to be Our Lord’s disciple.
He says, Follow Me, and it is then a question of how far and how seriously we will each do that.
We can either be terrible or brilliant, or somewhere in between, fair to middling. These are the categories of achievement put before us in the parable. The worst category is the first, who just never got going. The best is the fourth, who produced an abundant crop.
In between we have what is probably the vast majority of Christians, muddling and middling between the worst and the best; sometimes being outstandingly good, other times crashing.
If we are In-between we worry too much about the short term view and lose sight of the ultimate goal. We are either trying to avoid pain or we are seeking pleasure – not wrong objectives per se, perfectly natural behaviour; but Our Lord is asking us to look beyond; to follow Him into the unknown and trust that He will do the best thing possible for us.
Do we dare to trust Him? If we do He will lift us out of mediocrity to a higher level, the fourth category, those who yield a rich crop.
All sin at root is either avoiding duty or seeking forbidden pleasure. It is an attempt we make to find happiness elsewhere than the will of God.
We follow Him, yes, but we do not entirely trust Him. We think His ways are rather too strict and we look for short cuts to get to the same destination with less effort.
How rise above this? Only by God’s grace. Only if we let Him lift us out of the mire, and put us on higher ground.
He will enable us to trust Him; to trust that as far as pain goes, anything we suffer in this life is very minor compared with the joy that awaits us (I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us. Rom 8,18
Or, For this momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, 2 Co 4,17)
And as far as pleasure goes, if we wait on Him, if we avoid the temptation to sin, He will give us much greater pleasure even in this life. The joy of being in union with Him. With heaven to follow. (And everyone who has given up houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands for the sake of My name will receive a hundred times more, and will inherit eternal life. Mt19,29)
St Paul in the epistle speaks of the thorn in his flesh. We all have those. They are to prevent us being too happy with this life as we find it. We are inclined very easily to sink back into complacent acceptance. We need things to go wrong to remind us that this is not our true home, that we have to pack up from our roadside camp and keep going on the pilgrimage.
When we complain about how hard life is we are forgetting we are merely pilgrims, mistaking the journey for the destination.
Let us ask for the grace which can lift us out of the mediocrity of wanting only an easy life, free from pain and full of pleasures – to lift us to the higher vision, harder to imagine, but much more real, the life of union with God.
Our Lord needs strong and good disciples. He is patient with us in our weakness, but why stay weak if we can be strong? We will never not need Him, but having Him we can be and do much better.
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