XV Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
Mt 13:1-23
The Gospel passage for this 15th Sunday (Mt 13:1-23) is the beginning of Jesus' third discourse reported by the evangelist Matthew. It is the discourse that Jesus delivers by telling a series of parables, of which today we hear the first one, that of the sower.
It is a complex passage, which is structured in three parts, preceded by an introduction (Mt 13:1-3): in the first part (Mt 13:3-9) Jesus tells the parable; in the second part (Mt 13:10-17) the disciples approach Him and question Him as to why He speaks to people in parables; in the third part (Mt 13:18-22) Jesus explains the parable to the disciples.
Fisrt and foremost, I would like to pause on an apparent oddity: Jesus tells the parable to everyone; then He seems to say that only the disciples can understand it. Finally, he explains the parable precisely to the disciples, who seemed to be the only ones who understood it.
Now, this seems to me to be an important detail: Jesus tells the parable to everyone, like the sower who sows his seed in all soils: he does not choose only some, he does not make distinctions, he does not spare his gift. He accepts the risk that his gift will be lost, for this is the logic of love. The parables highlight the different types of listening, of accepting Jesus' proclamation.
The parable, then, is like a seed, which does not immediately reveal its mystery, which does not immediately bear its fruit: it depends on who welcomes it, on how one welcomes it. Some understand it, some do not; some harden their hearts, some open them; some listen without understanding, some listen and understand, and bear fruit.
We find the difference in these diverse attitudes in v. 10: "Then the disciples came to him and said, 'Why do you speak to them in parables?'"
What allows the Word to go down deep, to bear fruit, is the attitude of the disciples who have the courage, after listening without understanding - like everyone else - to approach Jesus and ask questions. The disciples are not better, they do not have something more than others. They simply remain within a relationship with the simplicity of those who admit they do not understand, who accept that they do not know, but do not run away, do not close their hearts.
Jesus remains a mystery that exceeds the possibility of any man's knowledge, but different are the reactions of those who meet and hear him, just as different are the soils on which the seed falls.
The disciples “came to” Jesus, an expression that recalls the one we heard last Sunday, when Jesus invited all the weary and fatigued to come to Him (Mt 11:28) to know the Father and find rest: and “coming to” says a movement, a decision of the heart, a search, a willingness not to stop in the face of what eludes us, a desire to know and to be open to the power of the Father's love, which, like a seed, makes life blossom. This is what the disciples do in today's Gospel; they draw near.
In the Gospels, it is often Jesus who draws near: accomplishing the movement of one who does not leave the other in his pain. Today we are told that “approaching” is also our verb, our identity: we come close to the One who has made himself close.
The parable seems to mean that the knowledge of the Father, the knowledge that Jesus had proposed last Sunday to all the weary and oppressed, is not a matter of a moment, but is a process that asks to “come to”, that requires a long time of patience: it is, in fact, a matter of letting the seed go down deep. Which is so difficult, especially in our times, and yet so necessary.
The place where life germinates is thus man's interiority: for those who live at the surface of themselves, the danger of dispersion and distraction is very close.
On the contrary, the parable of the sower tells us that we need depth and that only listening to the Word can bring us to the depth of our lives.
What happens within this depth of heart?
We must understand that in a sense, God always speaks in parables or, to be more clear, that our life revolves around the Word of the Father, which asks to be received, treasured, and meditated.
And for this to happen, we are asked to draw near.
+Pierbattista
