Gospel Reflection 2020/2021

Gone are the days when people cultivated crops and vegetables to earn a living. But still, there are many of us who choose gardening as a leisure activity or a favourite hobby. We do find joy in planting, growing, cultivating and tending plants. It is amazing to see how a tiny seed sprout and grow and thrive.

Seed(s) – sowing, sprouting, growing – is a common recurring theme in the Gospels, often used by Jesus in His parables to reveal and teach God’s divine truth. In the Gospel reading of the Fifth Sunday of Lent, Jesus already knows the hour of His Passion and Death is imminent, yet He points us to the image of ‘a wheat grain that falls on the ground’…

What is Jesus trying to tell us? What can seed(s) teach us about God’s truth?

1) Choose the RIGHT SEEDS.

If we want to reap good fruits, we must sow the right seeds. There is always a choice: we can choose to grow wheats (good) or weeds (evil). We can choose to sow the seeds of faith, hope, love and virtues, or we can choose to sow the seeds of hatred, discords, divisions and evil. The temptation is that it is always easier to grow weeds (evil) than to grow wheat (good).

St Paul [Ga 6: 7-8] rightly warns us that, “You reap whatever you sow. If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh; but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit.”

Let us therefore be wise to discern between:

(a) the good and the evil,

(b) the good and the seemingly good, and

(c) the good and the greater good.

2) Prepare the RIGHT SOIL and the RIGHT GROUND.

In the Parable of the Sower [Mt 13: 1-23], the seed is the word of God, Christ the sower; whoever finds this seed will remain for ever. Jesus comes among us sowing the word of God. He alone has the message of eternal life. He comes to offer us the seed of salvation, the word of God, the message of eternal life.

Jesus the Eternal Word comes to us and dwells among us, but He is met with different responses. Some hear His word and reject His word right away; some hear His word, but eventually lose His word because His word has not taken root in their hearts; some hear His word, but His word is choked by the worries of the world and the lure of riches. Only the hearts, prepared with the right soil and the right ground, that readily welcome His word and nurture His word, and yield bountiful harvests.

3) Maintain the RIGHT FAITH.

Every good seed given to us by God, though tiny like a mustard seed, is full of endless possibilities. Every single tiny seed is charged with God’s creative power – capable of re-creating you and me and the entire universe. And while the seed lies silently and hidden in the darkness of the earth, the mystery of life has already begun.

Yes, we can till the earth, water the ground, fertilize the soil, but we cannot force the seed to sprout or to grow. We can only do what we can to cooperate with God’s grace and leave the rest to God. It is important for us to have the right faith in God our Master, trusting that He will see to His seeds, His plants and His harvests. Every seed of faith, hope, love and virtue, will sprout and grow and bear bountiful harvests, not in our time but in God’s time.

4) Jesus is the SEED (wheat grain).

Jesus, by using the wheat grain, is in fact talking about Himself – how His Passion and Death will bring to birth a new humanity.

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI says, “Now is no longer the time for words and discourses; indeed the crucial hour has come for which the Son of God came into he world and although His soul is troubled, He makes Himself available to fulfil the Father’s will to the end. And this is the will of God: to give eternal life to us who have lost it. However, in order for this to be brought about – Jesus dies, like a grain of wheat that God the Father has sown in the world. Indeed, only in this way, can a new humanity germinate and grow, free from the dominion of sin and able to live in brotherhood, as sons and daughters of the one Father who is in heaven.”

As disciples of Jesus, we are called to follow Him wherever He goes, to do whatever He does, and to surrender totally to the will of the Father. Here is the paradox of Jesus Christ: anyone who loves his life loses it; anyone who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. When we are selfish and clingy to our life, we are too full of ourselves and thus there is no space for Christ’s divine life. But every time when we pour out our life selflessly and generously for God and for others – in a way emptying ourselves – Christ’s divine life will flow into the void, fill us up, becoming within us a living spring, welling up to eternal life.

Let our fervent prayer be:

“Lord Jesus Christ, may I always love You above all things.”