Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)
«This is how it is with the kingdom of God; it is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land»
Today, Jesus gives us two parables about farming: the parable of the scattered seed, and the parable of the mustard seed. These were images that the men and women listening to Jesus could relate to, since most of them spent their days in the fields planting, watering and reaping. Our Lord told these parables using something they knew —agricultural work— in order to teach them something they did not know about: the Kingdom of God!
Indeed Jesus teaches something about his spiritual Kingdom. In the first parable He says: “This is how it is with the kingdom of God; it is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land” (Mk 4:26). And He introduces the second by saying, “To what shall we compare the kingdom of God? It is like a mustard seed” (Mk 4:30).
Most of us today have little in common with those farmers; yet these parables can powerfully resonate in our modern minds because we can still understand quite a lot about planting, watering and harvesting, and somehow we sense through his words, that God has planted something in our hearts that will not allow us to move completely away from him.
What is the Kingdom of God? It is «Jesus himself», as Pope Benedict XVI reminds us. And our soul «is the essential location of the Kingdom of God». God wants to live and grow inside us. If we seek God's wisdom and obey his commands, our life will become as steady as a rock and acquire a power that we can barely imagine.
If we patiently correspond to his grace, his divine life will definitely grow in the soul the way seed grows in the field or, as the medieval mystic, Meister Eckhart, has beautifully expressed: «The seed of God is in us. Given an intelligent and hard-working farmer and a diligent field hand, it will thrive and grow up to God, whose seed it is; and accordingly its fruits will be God nature. Pear seeds grow into pear trees, nut seeds into nut trees, and God seed into God».
