DAILY- HOMILY

The early Church found great comfort in this parable. Our first Christians were hard put to understand why their preaching of the gospel was not universally accepted. And why did some people who enthusiastically embraced the word when they first heard it, later drop away from the word and the community? All this puzzled the early church. They thought perhaps that they themselves were at fault, that they were not preaching the word with sufficient conviction.

Luke reported this parable of the Lord for the sake of these discouraged early Christians. Jesus' own words put them at ease. The word, like the seed, was thrown broadcast over the land. Whether it would issue in a fruitful plant depended to a great extent on the ground on which the seed fell. Growth of the word, therefore, depended on the dispositions of the person who received it. Was the recipient open to the word, had he sufficient maturity and depth, was he sufficiently sincere?

So also today: we can't expect our preaching, whether we preach by homilies and sermons or by our lives, to produce always a hundredfold. Much will depend on the disposition of the recipients. So the parable is presented to us by Luke to encourage us today to preach and/or to live our faith enthusiastically even though we don't see a hundredfold harvest.

The parable, therefore, is meant to be a source of comfort for us. However, if we read it honestly, it should cause at least a bit of anxiety within us. Because it's also true that the word's growth within us will depend to a great extent on the dispositions with which we receive it.