Why does our Lord Jesus give us emphasis in His parable of the Seeds and the Sower to the material into which the seed is planted? He not only lists the different material in sequence – path, rock, thorns, and good soil – but He attaches specific symbolism to each one, which we see in His explanation to the disciples. Jesus is at pains to specify the differences in the material that receive the Word of God. Why is He at such pains? What is He after? Does He want the Word of God to be received on path, rock, or thorns? Clearly He does not. He wants the Seed to be received by good soil. So we need to think deeply on this.
Towards doing so, let us remember that the purpose of the Pre-Lent over its three Sundays is to prepare us for Lent. To prepare us to take on what Lent is all about. And what Lent is all about is the inner world of the heart, where unseen warfare happens between the Devil and the Holy Angels, even the Devil and Christ Himself.
What the Pre-Lent season invites us to recognize is that to fully attend to the unseen warfare, we must go on pilgrimage: indeed, that the spiritual life is a pilgrimage to the heart, and through the heart to Jesus Christ, and through Christ to the Father. The pilgrimage of Pre-Lent is a call to spiritual labor, through which we must love our Lord Jesus Christ, Who is our strength, our Saviour, our fortress. Hence we ask in our Collect, grant that by Thy power we may be defended against all adversity. It is Christ Who defends us. It is Christ Who shields us. It is Christ Who takes us under His wing and protects us.
We must take comfort in Christ’s protection, my dear brothers and sisters. Who else can protect us? Who else by Christ has the words of eternal life which shield us from our adversaries? And it is through taking comfort in Christ’s protection that we can allow ourselves to be vulnerable before Him. Being vulnerable before Christ means we recognize our weaknesses – it means we recognize our failings – our shortcomings – our reliance on vices, what the New Testament writers call “passions,” and are our unholy habits of thought and action. It is because of our vices that we are led to commit sin. Vices lead to sins that we commit, either in the action of our mind or in outward deeds. This is how we must understand our weakness: unholy habits are rooted deeply in us, and we cannot help ourselves.
We need Jesus Christ. Only a Saviour can rescue us. Only a Saviour can uproot our unholy habits by His grace and by His transforming Holy Spirit. To be a sinner is to be a person who is aware that he or she is in need of a Saviour. This is humility, this is being reality-based: we cannot save ourselves, we cannot uproot our unholy habits that lead to committing sin without Jesus Christ, Who is our only Saviour, and the Saviour of all who put their trust in Him and Him alone.
To have that attitude, to have that outlook, to be reality-based as a way of life, is the attitude and outlook of humility and all Christians aspire to attaining this attitude and outlook. We do not start there after our Baptism. We must grow spiritually to attain that attitude, as our everyday attitude; we must grow spiritually after Baptism to attain that outlook, as our everyday outlook. Baptism is necessary as the first step towards dying to self and taking on the resurrected life of Christ as our own life, but we must be trained, disciplined, and made fit for true humility.
This is what our Lord is after in His parable of the Seed and the Sower. We are all striving to be good soil. We are striving to be those who, after hearing the Word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience. The Church teaches we can get their in this life, we can become good soil through the liturgical and sacramental life of worship in the Church. But often we are not the good soil, but may be the thorns, who hear the Word, but as soon as they go on their way the are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, so their fruit does not mature. We may even be on the rock, who are joyful when they hear the Word, but because they do not have root, when they are tested by life they lose the Word and fall away from Him. We even might be on the path, who hear the Word, but the Devil comes and takes away the Word from their hearts, because they have not learned how to reject the Devil’s invitations, and have rather suffer from all sorts of vices that they have yet to ask God to remove.
And so, in addition to the liturgical life and the Sacraments, the Church has always emphasized the importance of examining our conscience, and doing so regularly. Preparing for Lent is a time to examine our conscience. It is a time to take inventory about ourselves. It is a time to take inventory about our habits, and whether we have unholy habits, unholy vices, that keep us from being good soil. to borrow from Saint John: If we say we have no vices, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our vices, God who is faithful and just will forgive us our vices, and cleanse us from the unrighteousness of our vices. All of this through Jesus Christ, Who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen
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