Benedictine Sisters of FL

Holy Name Monastery
Founded 1889

soil

Better than a Biscuit

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I invite you to consider, as you do lectio with this Gospel: Which am I?  Am I the sower, the seed, the soil or a plain old weed?  Or perhaps it would be better to ask: when am I like a weed needling others or jabbing them like a thorn?  When have I been the sower of good seed?  How have I been the seed that blossomed in another?  And, please, God, may I always be good soil, receptive to the good seed you freely scattered all around me… often right at my feet in the rhythm of my day.  May my ears be attentive to your voice, my eyes only take in the good and my voice be an instrument to further Your kingdom.

In Jesus’ story the sower spreads good seed in the field expecting a healthy wheat harvest.  But in the dark of night an enemy comes and sows weeds in among the wheat.  So when the seedlings begin to sprout the workers in the field see that something is amiss.  Those are not all wheat plants – what are they?  How’d they get there?

A little knowledge of botany will help us.   Matthew uses a Greek word for a botanical term that can be interpreted: wild rice grasses, or cockles.  Maybe in Florida it would remind us “sandspurs” – those icky, prickery round blooms – hard-to-get off with bare hands.  [A tip: wet your fingers before you try to grab hold of a sandspur.]  The difference between the wheat and cockles is evident only when the plants mature and the ears begin to appear.  With real wheat the ears will be so heavy they droop.  Cockle, on the other hand, has ears that stand up straight.

Now, when the field hands call this to the owner’s attention they are advised: “Let them grow up together until the harvest.”  That reminded me of the expression “accept the thorns among the roses” or “You gotta take a little bad along with the good.”  Intrigued, and with a little time to spare, I checked what Google could turn up.  This next one, Google said, only a born and bred Vermonter would say: “just because a cat has her kittens in the oven don’t make them biscuits.”

That reminded me of story that was related to me recently by a pastor-farmer-friend who had visited in a nearby town.  Before the days of COVID, he’d accepted an invitation to join the ministerial breakfast meeting.  It being March 16, and the feast of St. Isadore the farmer, they’d called upon a local pastor who was a member of one of Florida’s oldest ranching families to offer the invocation and meal blessing.

He was decked out in his typical attire: bib overalls, a baggy denim shirt, grasping a floppy straw hat.  “Please bow your heads as we ask God’s blessing,” he began and then waited for his table companion to clear his voice.  (Or, was he stifling a laugh?)  Our prayer leader went on: in a strong, reverent voice:

“Lord, you know I hate buttermilk”.  My friend opened one eye to peek at   the farmer and wondered where this was going.

The farmer loudly proclaimed, “And, Lord, I hate lard.”  Now my pastor-friend was growing concerned – wondered if those who knew him realized their friend was losing it.   Without missing a beat, the farmer continued, “And Lord, you know I don’t much care for raw white flour.”

My friend again opened an eye, but this time to glance around at everyone seated with him at table.  He realized that he wasn’t the only one beginning to feel uncomfortable.  The Pastor-Farmer just went right on: “But Lord, when you mix them all together and bake them, I do love those warm fresh biscuits.”

He paused a second,  lifted a hand, raised his eyes, and with a beatific smile, prayed on …”So Lord, when things come up that we don’t like, when life gets hard, when we don’t understand what you’re saying to us, help us to just relax and wait until you are done mixing.  It will probably be even better than biscuits.”   AMEN

~Reflection by Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB, Prioress

 

Wisdom 12-13, 16-19  Romans 8:26-27       Matthew 13:24-30

 

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Patches of Dirt or Fertile Soil

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First Reading  Wisdom 12:13,16-19                    Second Reading  Romans 8:26-27

Gospel (short form)  Matthew 13:24-30

Jesus’ parables aren’t meant to test our human intelligence.  They are moments of grace to ply open our heart’s willingness to surrender to, and be enveloped in, the always surprising generosity of God.

Here on our property, when we look out the window and behold the life cycle of the hay field or blueberry patch, we see first-hand in nature what Jesus is talking about.  He extends the lesson applying it to the human heart.  He reminds us here that there are folks whose hearts are like cement.  It does not matter how much or how often seed is poured on these souls.  Fertilize it, water it – nothing will cause those seeds to take root and sprout.  Listen to church and TV sermons 24/7, they remain unfazed.

Do you remember times you were like this …  not always … but a time or two when you just didn’t want to hear what God might have to say?

In contrast to the hardened-soil person, the shallow-soil person is hyper-responsive to God’s word—but only for a wee tiny time.  Like during a revival or summer retreat.  Don’t be one of these temporary ‘all in’ folks gobbling up every word and reading every book suggested by the retreat director.  But, sometimes the seed eventually sinks in and bursts through the pavement.  And right away, birds or insects snatch the new growth and it never comes to fruition.  It can’t survive the heat of the give and take of daily community life.

When were you like this?  Maybe in the novitiate … or the time in high school when the class made the senior retreat?  God was SO real to you … but God’s voice grew more faint as the days went by?

Then, there is a third type of soil – a thorny type – so tightly entangled with “thorns” that their thorns have become their identity.  Jesus calls these thorns “the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches.” Matthew says these people are caught up in anxiety and get choked on the lure of the riches of the world that tug and yank at their minds and hearts until the seed suffocates, rendering them spiritually barren.

When was this the case in your life?  Times when you were just too distracted to cultivate God’s word …  when several days went by without a space for Lectio or healthy self-care – when “thorny” remarks and obstinate behavior was your default mode?  That’s when God planted a general sense of dissatisfaction in the garden of your soul.

Oh, but how gratifying it must be to Jesus when He finds “good soil people” – when we share the time God has given us to meditate on the Word, let it penetrate and bear fruit – then we hold fast to the word making it our own.  Thus we grow more Christ-like over time by absorbing and practicing the precepts of Benedict.  Over the years, as the seeds continue to take root and blossom, the fruits and gifts of the Spirit flourish.  As one author describes Benedictine life: they fall down, and they get up … and fall down and they get up … as they ascend the ladder of humility.

We come not only to know, but to believe deep in our hearts that God can change hard, shallow, compromised patches of dirt into fertile garden soil.  As we read in Ezekiel: “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you.  And I will remove the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”

Many of us have, or have had, gardens.  And all of us–whether we’re gardeners with a green thumb, or thumbs with only a tinge of green, or only a “wishful” thumb – or a thumb that only knows how to operate a TV remote or a computer mouse — all of us know the principle of planting: when we put a seed in the ground, we expect a plant to appear …  some may even think it will sprout with a flower already on it J . We also know that not all seeds will produce full-grown plants. They just don’t, for a variety of reason.

We don’t have to ever have plowed fields for forty cents a day in order to know the different landscapes of which Jesus speaks. We know the beaten path of our own lives.   We’ve stumbled through the rocky patches of life.  We have been scratched and cut by the thorns of life.  But we have planted our roots deep in the sacred soil of life that feeds and grows us to become a harvest – whether it’s a thirty, sixty or a hundredfold – who’s counting?! – it’s all a harvest!  Given the right conditions apple seeds do become apples.  Mango seeds become mangoes.  God’s seeds become what we allow them to become.

Paraphrasing the words from Deuteronomy, we ask: “let the soil of my heart hear the words of Your mouth.  May Your instruction soak in like the rain and Your word permeate like the dew; like a gentle rain upon the grass and like a shower upon the crops.”

~Reflection by Roberta Bailey, OSB, Prioress
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