(Mt 13:1-23)

In a world that has lost its references but is perhaps attempting to create more authentic and profound ones, the mission of motherhood and fatherhood of those with experience is not only a material support: it extends to the more ancient discernment of the things of the soul.

The stony terrain and scorching climate of Palestine did not make life easy for those who lived from farming.

The scarcity of rain and the intrusion into the fields of those who wanted to shorten the journey destroyed the plants.

Tiring action and few tangible results.

Despite the enormous difficulties, every year the farmer sowed the seed generously - and ploughed, animated by trust in the seed's inner life force and in the munificence of nature.

Ploughing was after sowing, to prevent the turned clods of soil from drying out immediately under the powerful heat and not allowing the seed to take root, thanks to a minimum of moisture. 

Thus the sower did not select the different types of soil beforehand.

The parables compare the lived reality and the world of the Spirit.

The seed already works: the new 'coming kingdom' is not glorious, but here and there it takes root and produces - even where you do not expect it.

To a respectable mindset this sounds like madness, but the divine Farmer does not choose the type of 'soil', nor does he discriminate on the basis of the percentage of production [which would seem easy to predict].

The Sower even accepts that his 'grain' that fell on the 'good' (v.8 Greek text) i.e. full and fruitful soil [of his disciples and not] will bear fruit in different ways: "and they bore fruit who were a hundred, who were sixty, who were thirty".

Jesus means that the work of evangelisation cannot be measured with fussiness.

His Word remains as the Beginning thrown into the human heart by the One who is neither stingy nor exclusive - but magnanimous.

His Church is a small world alternative to both empire and selective religions: it has no intention of carving out disciples who are 'better' than others and isolated from the reality of the human family.

A new way of life.

Says the Tao Tê Ching (XL): "Returning is the movement of the Tao; weakness is what the Tao adopts. The ten thousand creatures that are under the sky have life from being; being has life from non-being'.

And Master Wang Pi comments: 'Being has non-being for its utility: this is its return'. Master Ho-shang Kung adds: "The root is that towards which the Tao moves, which in its motion makes the ten thousand creatures live. If they oppose it, they perish. The Tao always makes use of softness and weakness, that is why it can last a long time".

God does not force the growth of the 'grain' in each of us, but waits patiently. He even accepts that it sprouts badly, or not at all.

Since he scatters overflowingly on all kinds of hearts [even on the asphalt] he knows that he will be accused of being careless: he is not concerned with the quantity (!), nor with the immediate outward fruits (!) of his 'seed' - he does not care that the work be 'effective from the beginning' (!).

But he cares to make us understand that he is Father, not the calculating God of the most varied beliefs: stingy, outward, stingy, and prejudiced.

The parable of the Sower as historically narrated by Jesus (vv.3-9) denotes the total positivity of his Message: he proclaims a new world; first of all a different, tolerant and benevolent Heaven.

The principle of our life as saved is not what we do for God, but what He - Generous and Serene - does for us. Just like a condescending and longsuffering Parent, who ceaselessly offers opportunities for life.

The Kingdom of the Lord is not to be prepared and set up [according to normal preconceptions] but welcomed.

The Master intended to shift the criterion of the pious life: from personal effort to 'letting oneself be saved'.

The Redemption has roots of the unprecedented that displace propositions and expectations.

It is not founded on plotted tracks.

It takes shape from a providential initiative, in gratuitous liberality; through the tolerant calm of Heaven - which allows us a process and a wide time for growth.

The metaphor that follows the initial parable is intended to emphasise that any lack of result is not to be attributed to the Seed's lack of vitality, nor to the divine Work, but to man's freedom; to his condition of limitation or inconsistency.

Unfortunately, subsequent reflection - within a few decades of the Lord's death - began to suffer from the dominant cultural cliché [triggering a ridiculous competition with religions].

Purist expectations on the side gradually eroded both the sense of the proclamation of the near and superabundant Kingdom and the nature of the Gift, as well as the transparency of its submissive availability to all.The Son exclusively proclaimed the longsuffering of the Father: the Subject, Motive and Engine of our ability to accept the Vocation, and face the personal journey.

In later reworking, the original parables became allegories, overflowing with symbols with a definite moralistic meaning.

Allegories are generally trivial narratives, veined with impersonal and primal considerations [here, on the "quality of the soil"].

This passage testifies to the difficulty of understanding the Son of God's astounding original call.

He intended to propose a path of Faith to all, precisely to supplant the anxious weight of the oppressive archetype of the various doctrines and behavioural casuistry.

The ethicist yoke does not start from Love: it presupposes stinginess, inadequacy, and shame everywhere; even in the spiritual life [shrunken, perpetually in the balance, always and everywhere insufficient].

The protagonist of the passage (from v.19) is no longer God and His munificent gesture [who spares no expense in sowing His Seed in scattering], but the type of earth: the apostle himself - who would thus become the subject of the spiritual journey.

Disaster.

Guilty always (vv.19-23): you have not watched over the one who snatches the Seed; you have had only initial fervour, you have no root in you, and you are inconstant; and if worried, seduced, or covetous, you will be unfruitful...

Finally, if even you were grounded in "the beautiful one" (v.23) you should still be careful... because you can have different results: "who a hundred who sixty who thirty" (v.23).

Impossible to succeed. In short, devotion and obsession seem to go hand in hand [against 'nature'].

But one enters a minefield - against the main lines of any personal inclination and talent, or genuine charisma even of the group.

It seems that it is the woman and the man [those who receive the Word] who must focus on themselves, identify their faults, and - having finally become aware of them and their clear ability - strive to 'improve', on pain of exclusion from the ranks of the 'best'.

All this would lead precisely the most motivated or euphoric people to the depersonalisation of the very character of the Calling, to the denial of their intimate life, to an insane expenditure of energy.

Having wiped out trust in the tide of the Coming Seed - that is, having lost the propulsive dynamism of ordinary existence and its opportunities for life - each one would always find before him those imperfections that then stand in the way.

In fact, those who are unaware of man's diverse and very normal energies [all malleable and potentially preparatory to developments; to be perceived in the round, assumed and invested in] neglect their own essence and turn into those deadly alcoves (of themselves and others) that they proclaim they would never want to be.

As a result of extrinsic or recondite efforts, it is precisely the one-sided 'phenomena', and the sterilised, that end up losing their way to the astonishment of God that displaces.

This from the valorisation of opposites.

Moreover, more than spontaneous souls, precisely such firsts in the class put their real soul inclination in the balance - perhaps mistaking character nature for ballast.

The (historical) result: here we are all ready to attack, each other. It is the picture of today's lacerations; of the usual Guelphs versus Ghibellines.

This is due to the fact that we have gone from the fascinating proposal of Faith, to the fatigue of religious [and moralising] retreat to the 'terrain'.

Heath paradoxically increasingly superficial, insubstantial, stony, stifled, unintegrated - one-way and outward!

Parables, and the mystery of blindness: Narration and transmutation

Being lost, for transformation

(Mt 13:10-17; cf. Mk 4:10-12.25; Lk 8:9-10.18)

St Paul expresses the sense of the "mystery of blindness" that contrasts him on his journey with the famous expression "thorn in the flesh": wherever he went, enemies were already ready; and unexpected disagreements.

So it is with us too: fateful events, catastrophes, emergencies, disintegration of the old reassuring certainties - all external and swampy; until recently assessed with a sense of permanence.

Perhaps in the course of our existence, we have already realised that misunderstandings were the best ways to reactivate ourselves, and introduce the energies of renewed Life.

These are those resources or situations that we might never have imagined as allies to our own and others' fulfilment.

Erich Fromm says:

"To live is to be born at every moment. Death occurs when one ceases to be born. Birth is therefore not an act; it is an uninterrupted process. The purpose of life is to be fully born, but the tragedy is that most of us die before we are truly born'.

Indeed, in the climate of turmoil or absurd divergence [which forces us to regenerate] the most neglected intimate virtues sometimes emerge.New energies - seeking space - and external powers. Both malleable; unusual, unimaginable, heterodox.

But they find the solutions, the real way out of our problems; the way to a future that is not a mere rearrangement of the previous situation, or of how we imagined 'should have been and done'.

Once a cycle is over, we begin a new phase; perhaps with greater rectitude and frankness - brighter and more natural, humanising, close to the 'divine'.

Authentic and engaging contact with our deepest states of being is acutely generated precisely by detachments.

They bring us into dynamic dialogue with the eternal reservoirs of transmuting forces that inhabit us, and belong to us most.

Primordial experience that goes straight to the heart.

Within us such a path 'fishes' the creative, fluctuating, unprecedented option.

In this way, the Lord transmits and opens his proposal using 'images'.

Arrow of Mystery that goes beyond the fragments of consciousness, of culture, of procedures, of what is common.

For a knowledge of oneself and the world that goes beyond that of history and the chronicle; for the active awareness of other contents.

Until labour and chaos itself guide the soul and force it to another beginning, to a different gaze (all shifted), to a new understanding of ourselves and the world.

Well, the transformation of the universe cannot be the result of a cerebral or dirigiste teaching; rather, of a narrative exploration - one that does not turn people away from themselves.

And Jesus knows this.

New interpretation of the different Grounds

Evolution of the Covenant, in the time of crisis: usual flaws, different harmonisations

(Mt 13:18-23)

God is munificent, especially in the age of rebirth from crisis: also a time of generous sowing by the Father.

He remains the Farmer of his seedlings - more adventurous and less respectable than traditionalist, or fashionable.

Of course, the Word of the Master and Lord warns against anything that might prevent a new Genesis - first and foremost, because we often wait to mechanically return to the old roles and the old way of things; to the habituated, outward-looking, dirigiste model.

We are perhaps still too attached to cravings and previous economic levels (v.22) now overwhelmed by things... not accepting the emergence of opposites we never experienced or planned for (v.19).

We still think we can return to 'everything as before'; to the superficiality of the society of the look that is not rooted in conviction; of the immediately enthusiastic exteriority (vv.20-21) that does not shift our gaze.

Instead, the dissimilar tide comes for us to learn to fix our eye within, elsewhere, and beyond - to focus on our own and others' 'unique figure' in the conviviality of differences.

It is likely that the knowledge or way of life we would like to reaffirm is still tied to standards, whether welcome, old, or à la page - now inadequate to provide new answers to new questions.

And perhaps all of this has led us too much to trace and imitate the disqualified 'having-appearing', instead of being, and that precious character at the heart of our Calling by Name.

It is not out of the question that we have allowed ourselves to become accustomed to decision-making nomenclatures or to rushing for performance anxiety.

They do not attend to the 'beautiful ground' of uniqueness, of the unprecedented vocational gift [it would lead to a better contact with the disregarded energies of our genuine inclination - nested among the inconsistencies].

Indeed, here we are, all caught up in the concerns of restoring 'as before' or 'as we should be'....

This, despite the fact that the present traumas are explicit signals to broaden hitherto stifled consciousnesses (as in 'brambles': v.22).

Eloquent appeals - even contemporary ones - to launch each side towards the Exodus, for the conquest of renewed freedom; territories of the soul, albeit hidden, in the core of the essence.

All the influence of an empty and formal spirituality that we drag along, still inhibits a good perception of today, and enervates, takes away intimate strength.

It does not allow one to follow one's own impulse in harmony with the inner world - or one's own tendencies in listening to the incessant call of the Gospels [which is still being disseminated by unaccredited prophets, to announce the truth and the creation of an alternative world].

Well, something or the whole of life may turn out to be haphazard; more than ever not to go the right way and clear: not to make us as special as the Sower would wish - precisely because of the stereotypes or emotional vacuums that steal the Seed, that is to say, choke the plant, or because of the usual presumption that wants to soar straight away and thus prevent us from putting down deep 'roots'.

We must then lay aside the cerebral whirlwinds and one-sided volitional paraphernalia; leave space and surrender to the new current of quality that is bringing us.And surrender to the proposals of the tide of 'coming grains' to guide us beyond the old contentions: to the natural, original energy of Providence, which knows more than we do.

To the Wind of the Spirit that deploys beyond, the grains - where you do not expect them - it does not matter what percentage is productive (v.23b) but our 'beautiful' attunement (v.23a Greek text) that helps to bring us up to speed with the reality of farsighted blending.

They will otherwise tidy everything up: beyond habitual mental systems - and every result will be more shrewd, in favour of the Peripheries.

Without too much disposition and calculation in the choice of ground [once pretentiously removed and sanitised upstream] we will realise that the Sower will have finally crumbled so many worldly pedestals; not to humiliate anyone, but to bestow surprises of astounding fruitfulness, even for the growth of every creed (all denominations).

His is everywhere and always an exceptional generous and creative Action, deployed to regenerate and empower convictions.

Not to make us redo the usual textbook actions or clichés [and resume playing with performance, or with chained restraints of widely approved patterns].

If we want to synchronise the same movement as the Sower, we must with Him and like Him move towards the destitution of the various terrains (existential situations).

Special narrowness - even more acute in times of global emergency - which obliges us to 'move', to become itinerant, to disseminate everywhere.

And not only collect the "hundred" (v.23) in the usual protected 'centre'.