A friend once told me that loving is a way of knowing, that we are to read scripture with more heart, and less brain. In the parable of the Sower and the Seed, it is those who are able to embrace the Word of God with a generous and good heart that bear fruit, rather than the ones who read it for information, like a manual to clean a household appliance or a tutorial for a software application. When we can quiet the chattering mind and let the seeds of Jesus’ message seep into a place deep inside of us, they inevitably transform and lead to metanoia, that is, transformation.
That exercise of opening the heart is not so easy. Thus, the mention of perseverance at the end of the parable. We don’t embrace what we hear once and let it spontaneously grow a garden of goodness within us. A convenient hearing of the Word is what happened to the seed when it fell on the path, rocky ground, and thorns. A better offer came along—a promise found outside God’s terrain. Or a worry that derailed, as worries often do.
Listening with the heart is a practice that demands a posture of humility that has something to do with the first reading: “What you sow is not brought to life unless it dies.” Our soil becomes more fertile as we forget the self, the plans of preservation we cling to, and rely more on God. It is both habit and grace, trust and gift, that cultivate a garden of love, a kind of knowing where new life thrives.
