Friday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time

One element of Jesus’ parables that often stands out is their compression of time. This is especially true of the agricultural parables. In just a few sentences, an entire growing season passes before us. The seed is scattered, birds arrive, shoots spring up, the sun scorches them, thorns choke them, and the good plants bear fruit.

Every gardener knows that this is not how we experience these things. Seeds do not grow and fail in a matter of moments. Roots develop beneath the soil where we cannot see them. Plants may endure several days of intense heat before withering. Thorns grow gradually around them. Fruit takes time to ripen.

Of course, this compression is necessary. We would not want the parable of the sower to be a hundred-page journal detailing the condition of each plant day by day. The nature of storytelling requires Jesus to compress the growing season into a few vivid images.

But we must remember that time has been compressed. Otherwise, we may begin expecting the grace of God to work at the speed of the story.

We are often in too much of a hurry. We plant a seed or undertake some good work, and almost immediately we begin looking for fruit. We want evidence that our efforts have succeeded. If we encounter an early failure, we may conclude that everything is lost and give up. If we experience early success, we may decide that our work is finished.

Yet beginnings are not endings. What first appears to be a failure may eventually bear abundant fruit. What seems at first to be a great success may not survive the heat of the day. Situations must be allowed to mature before their true character becomes visible.

I experienced this in myself. There is a small patch of ground cut out of the rectory patio and intended for a garden. My predecessors seem to have given up on it, because when I arrived, it was little more than a patch of weeds.

Last year, I pulled out all the weeds, cleared the ground, and planted flowers. There were some early struggles, but eventually the flowers began to thrive. When the growing season ended and winter arrived, I thought my work was finished. The flowers would return in due time, and I could move on to something else.

But that was not to be. When spring arrived, the weeds returned—at least three weeds for every flower! There were more weeds than I had ever seen. So I had to go back to work.

So it is with the Kingdom of God. We plant the seed, we cultivate the ground, and then we wait. But waiting does not mean that our work is finished. We continue tending what has been entrusted to us because we cannot yet see what the final harvest will be.

The effects of our work may take years to become visible. We may not see them fully within our lifetime. That is why the essential thing is not immediate success but faithfulness. We must keep sowing, keep cultivating, keep removing the weeds, and allow God’s grace time to accomplish its work.

We should not become so preoccupied with immediate outcomes that we abandon the work God has given us. If we remain obedient to the Lord and continue planting his Word in the hearts of those we encounter, God will bring forth fruit in his time—thirtyfold, sixtyfold, or a hundredfold. And even if we do not see the whole harvest in this life, we will rejoice in it at last in the Kingdom of Heaven.