‘Listen then to what the parable of the sower means.’
Matthew 13:18-23
I am reminded of my time as a schoolteacher, just four years, when I had to explain concepts and provide meaning when confronted by bewildered faces. I did not teach in parables but ‘co-valent bonding’ seemed to be one for twelve-year old boys.
And there is my time, since, in Adult Education, bringing persons to understand that development is about people and that all development must be people centred. A parable? No, but a deep truth that often bewilders even high government and corporate executives who are like rocky ground who hear it and receive it with joy.
This is short-lived though. It does not seep into their policies and programmes, because, consumed by power and profit and not rooted in a deep respect for people and humanity, ‘they quickly fall away’ and are ‘unfruitful’.
We thank God for those in our parishes, church and society who are rooted in the values of the Gospel and who receive the word and act on it. They bear fruit ‘yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown’.