Homily

It is not very often that these two readings fall on the same day, but I hope you noticed they both were about sowing seed. In the epistle today, it's about How Much a person sows. "He who sows sparingly will reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will reap bountifully." Makes good sense. St. Paul is talking about money here because he is taking up a collection for the Christians in Jerusalem who are suffering from famine and he wants his Corinthian parishioners to be as generous as they can. So he reminds them that they don't need to worry about themselves if they contribute. The Lord will be sure that they are taken care of materially, and because of their generous charity, other people will be giving, thanks to God.

Yes, St. Paul is talking about money here but in the larger part of this letter he compares generous giving to the generous love of Jesus Christ who poured Himself out for us. So I think we can also say that the Christian who gives generously of himself will also reap bountifully. How do we see that? Many times we are people who see more clearly when we think of big gestures, and so who are the people who give of themselves generously? Maybe women who join a convent, or missionaries who take care of starving children, or someone who suffers greatly but bears it in great faith, or a soldier who gives his own life to save his fellow soldier in battle, or a priest who mops church floors. Great deeds. Tough situations. They make impressions upon us about generosity.

We are also called to be generous, but our giving may not happen in dramatic or life-changing events. For most of us, most of our giving will be, or should be, on a day-to-day basis. It is a giving of ourselves to our family and friends in what we say to them, how we treat them, how we serve them, how we value them, how we love them. And not just those closest to us, it is also how generous we are with the rest of the people we will spend our day with. Even if they cut in line, even if they say something rude, even if they are very difficult to get along with, even if they are not generous with me driving, how willing am I to sow some seeds of kindness, or patience, or helpfulness, or encouragement? We may not have a lot of opportunities to make large, generous donations of ourselves but we do not give less if we continually give day after day after day in smaller ways. Today I might be able to give $1,000 to feed the poor, or I might only be able to give $10 today, but if I give $10 a day for 100 days, I am no less generous, and in fact, maybe I have strengthened my soul by my consistent giving of a smaller amount which is offered day after day than by giving a large amount at one time. People don't get up in the morning and think, "I wonder how generous, how giving of myself today I ought to be." People don't do that. But maybe we should. The Lord has been most generous to me. If I in turn, am not generous in the daily events of my life, His gifts to me are ineffective. It is a paradox that only when I'm willing to give them away am I truly able to fully experience genuine thanksgiving to God.

The Gospel today doesn't talk about how much seed we sow, but where we sow it, what kind of ground we let it fall on. A hundred years ago, most of us likely would have been farmers growing our own food, and even if we weren't farmers, the pace of our lives would have been not that much different than a farmer's. Our lives today are generally much more hectic, much faster paced, much more diversified, and as a result, instead of farming one plot of land, it's easy to think we're actually farming a number of different fields, one at home, another at work, another at school, another one when we're out in public, and a different field when we're all alone. They are all different kinds of fields, so it follows that each one needs to be treated differently. So when we're in this field we plant seed in this way, and when we're in that field we plant that way. When we're here we do this way, and there we do another way. Can't treat every field the same. You've got to be able to adjust your thinking and your actions according to the particular field you are standing in right now.

But it's not true. We don't have different parcels of land that we farm. We only have one field that we are responsible for, not many. And it is true that some parts of that field may be rocky, and some parts may have blackberries, and different areas need different consideration, but there is only one sower and one field. That one sower also has only one Lord, and one faith, and one source of life he or she can look to. If the harvest is to be a success then the same values, the same care, the same steady labor and attention must be given to that one field, no matter what part of it we are working, and if we do that, we are bound to end up in eternal thanksgiving to Christ. For we are to master our own field, but He is the Lord of the harvest.