Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

My word shall not return to me void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it. The rain and snow go down, water the earth, make it fertile - and only then return. The word of God works the same way: it goes out and achieves before returning.

The Parable of the Sower is often read as a self-assessment exercise: which soil am I? But the primary character is the sower, and the sower sows generously before assessing the ground. The word goes out. On the path. On the rocky ground. Among the thorns. On the good soil. The sowing is not conditional.

The thorns are worldly anxiety and the lure of riches. They are the specifically young adult temptations - the anxiety about the future, the career, the relationship, the finances; and the pull toward the life that is comfortable and successful and does not require the costly following. They do not uproot the word. They crowd it out.

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us. In your twenties the sufferings feel large and the glory feels abstract. Paul's claim is that the ratio is not close - the glory is that much larger.

Name the specific thorn - the anxiety or the lure that is at this moment stealing light from what the word has planted in you. Pull it. And receive the ratio: the suffering is real, and it is as nothing compared to what is coming.

Lord, let the word you sowed in me not return void. Pull the thorns. Deepen the root past the rocky layer. And let me hold the ratio. Precious Blood of Jesus, save us. Amen.