Peace be with you.
Friends, our first reading and our Gospel are about
the word of God today.
I love how Pope Francis recently has called us
to a deeper appropriation and appreciation
for the word of God.
And the dynamics now, both from God’s side
as he speaks and then our side as we receive,
are being explored in these readings.
So the first reading is from the fifty-fifth chapter
of Isaiah.
This marvelous section of Isaiah
is so rich in so many ways,
but this reflection upon the nature of God’s word
is especially good.
Listen now as Isaiah speaks:
“Thus says the LORD: Just as from the heavens
the rain and snow come down and do not return there
till they have watered the earth,
making it fertile and fruitful,
giving seed to the one who sows . . .
so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth.”
Now, what’s being described here?
Here’s the simple way to put it:
God’s word is not descriptive.
God’s word is creative.
Some of the twentieth-century language philosophers talk about
what they call the performative quality
of some of our language.
So a lot of our language is descriptive, right?
We’re just describing what we see.
We walk into a room or we see a place,
we go, oh, here’s what was going on.
Let me describe it to you.
Well, that language is kind of derivative
from experience, right?
It’s passive.
But other times, language has a performative quality.
Think of a police officer saying,
“You’re under arrest.”
I mean, those very words place the person under arrest.
Or a baseball empire saying, “Strike three.”
Well, like it or not, those words have changed the game.
So language can effect reality.
Well, listen now.
God’s word is never descriptive;
it just wouldn’t apply.
Because God is the one who made all things.
God can never, as it were, enter a room and say,
“Oh, isn’t that interesting?
Let me describe what’s going on.”
No, whatever is, is because of the divine word.
Therefore, in the richest possible sense,
God’s word is creative.
God’s word effects what it says.
That’s why here, as the rain and
snow come down, they don’t return without
effecting their purpose,
doing what they were sent to do.
So God’s word changes things.
It changes, first of all, reality.
God said, “Let there be light.”
And there was.
God said, “Let the earth come forth.”
And so it happened.
That high poetry of Genesis is meant to convey this truth,
that the whole world has been brought into being
through an intelligent act.
Which is why —I’ve said this many times—
but this is exactly why the sciences can get off the ground.
Why is it the case?
I mean, we take it so for granted,
we don’t really reflect upon it sufficiently.
Why is it the case that the world is marked
in every nook and cranny by radical intelligibility?
Whether you’re a psychologist, a biologist, a chemist,
a physicist, I don’t care what kind of scientist you are,
you’re assuming that the world you go out to meet
is marked by intelligible pattern and structure.
Why should that be true?
“Oh, just dumb chance.”
Come on.
Would we accept that kind of logic in any other area?
Maybe if you follow me, you’ve heard me speak
of this before.
But there’s a marvelous article written in 1960
by a secular Jewish physicist called Eugene Wigner.
And it bears the rather extraordinary title
“The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics
in the Physical Sciences.”
Now, what’s he drawing attention to?
And again, this is not a religious man,
but a physicist.
He’s drawing attention to the fact that
as the physicists do their work,
they employ the highest-level mathematics
to describe reality.
Well, why should that be true?
“The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics
in the Physical Sciences.”
Why should the highest kind of math
accurately describe the world?
Unless the world, listen, is marked already
by this extraordinarily complex intelligibility.
“As the rain and the snow come forth and do not return
without watering the earth,”
effecting their purpose,
“so my word goes forth from me.”
See, we first of all hear the divine word in the
very beings, structure, and intelligibility of nature.
I think, everybody, at a time when there’s so much
skepticism about God,
I’d start with the scientists and
ask that challenging question.
Not about their findings so much, but about
the assumptions they must make
to do their work in the first place.
There is the power of the divine word.
Now we go further, of course,
in our great tradition of revelation, and we say that
God spoke his word in an
even more pointed way —in the history of Israel.
Through covenant, and through Torah,
through prophecy, through law.
God made his word known to Israel.
And then in the fullness of time,
God spoke his very Word.
He spoke the Word.
“In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.”
The Word by which all things came to be,
the Word that spoke through the prophets,
now comes in-person, is spoken in full.
Now we’re talking, of course, about Jesus.
There’s the power, everybody, of the divine word.
Now, here’s something I’m going to say now
to my fellow Catholics.
I think our Protestant friends often say this
and understand it better than we do.
I mean the power of this word.
When you allow the divine word
to come into your life, it changes you.
You can’t really read the Bible
—and I mean now Torah, covenant, prophet,
Old Testament, and of course,
I mean reading about the Lord Jesus—
you can’t read the Bible without being changed.
If you just a little bit open your mind
and your heart to this word,
this word that made the universe,
you won’t be the same person afterward.
I think one of the great accomplishments,
I mentioned Pope Francis,
but he’s just echoing Vatican II.
Vatican II wanted us to recover,
rediscover, this power of the divine word.
Okay.
There’s Isaiah.
There’s, if you want, the divine side of this issue,
what the divine word looks like from God’s perspective.
But then, now look at the Gospel.
Jesus tells this extraordinary parable
that’s captivated people’s minds up and down
the Christian centuries, hasn’t it?
The parable of the sower.
I’ve got in my room a copy of the famous
Van Gogh picture.
I love Van Gogh and that beautiful image
of the sower of the seeds.
Well, that’s Christ himself, if you want.
It’s the Church up and down the ages,
sowing the seed.
Well, Jesus gives us this beautiful comparison, right?
“A sower went out to sow.
And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path,
and birds came and ate it up.
Some fell on rocky ground, where it had little soil.
It sprang up because the soil was not deep,
and so it withered.
Some fell among thorns. . . .
But some fell on rich soil, and produced fruit,
a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold.”
What’s he talking about?
Well, there’s the sower of the seed.
That’s Christ himself.
What’s he sowing?
The divine word, which is powerful.
But, everybody, our God respects our freedom.
The divine word, powerful indeed, yes,
effects what it says.
But God’s word doesn’t overwhelm us.
It invites us to respond.
And in a way, it’s an awful truth
I’m sharing here.
Because there is a sort of burden on us:
that in the presence of this word,
we have to decide.
We have to respond.
How do we take in God’s holy word?
Well, this is a rare Gospel too in Matthew,
because Jesus lays out the parable.
And he hardly ever does this.
Usually he just tells the parable
and then lets us try to figure it out.
But this one, he tells the disciples
exactly what he means.
So I’m going to let Jesus do the preaching here.
He says, “Hear then the parable of the sower.
The seed sown in the path is the one who
hears the word of the kingdom without understanding it,
and the evil one comes and steals it away.”
Oh boy, does it describe our time, I think.
Is the divine word sown?
Well, yeah.
I mean, especially in our Western culture.
Everybody knows the basic story of Jesus, probably.
They could lay it out in outline.
Everyone’s heard it in a way.
But what don’t they have?
They don’t have understanding of it.
Now, there’s a lot of reasons for this.
The Church should take a lot of blame,
to tell you the truth.
The Church has not been good at preaching the word,
has not been good at explaining it.
So the church has a lot of blame to share here.
But also, I think people just said,
look, I’m going to try to understand physics,
and science, and math and economics.
I’m going to try to understand my job better.
I’m trying to understand human relationships better.
I’m going to use my powerful mind
to understand all kinds of things,
but I’m not going to spend any time
with the word of God.
How many people, as they develop their knowledge
in all sorts of areas,
stay at the level of about a sixth grader
when it comes to religion?
Well, what’s going to happen to this powerful,
divine word?
It’s not going to be planted in us.
This lack of understanding.
And again, we’re to blame,
the Church is to blame to a degree.
But all of us sinners are also to blame.
The evil one will just carry it away.
Absolutely.
The word will not sink in.
The Lord goes on. Now listen:
“The seed sown on rocky ground is the one who
hears the word and receives it at once with joy.
But it has no root and lasts only for a time.”
And when tribulation and persecution come,
there it goes.
When I was doing seminary work full-time,
I’d often think about this.
Because a lot of guys come to the seminary because
they heard the divine word.
Yes, they did.
And it was powerful,
and it began to take root in them.
But then when the initial enthusiasm wore off
—it always does;
read all the spiritual masters, by the way, on this;
it always wears off
—we’ve got to hang in there.
We have to cultivate that seed,
even when we’re not excited about it.
Even when the original enthusiasm has passed.
So a lot of seminarians go through that experience.
“I don’t have the same excitement I had
when I first heard God’s word.”
Well, you’ve got to cultivate the seed in-season and out.
So for a lot of people maybe listening to me right now,
you say, “Yeah, at one point in my life
I was really excited about religious things.
And I was excited about the Lord.
But then, I didn’t cultivate it.”
And then what does the Lord say here?
“Some tribulation or persecution comes.”
Well, yeah, it always happens, doesn’t it?
Some difficulty, tribulation.
Someone attacks me, someone makes fun of me.
You’ve got to cultivate the seed, everybody.
Day in and day out, season in and season out.
When it’s fun to do so, when it’s not fun to do so.
Otherwise it’ll fade away.
How about this, then?
“The seed sown among thorns
is the one who hears the word,
but then worldly anxiety
and the lure of riches choke the word
and it bears no fruit.”
Boy, does that happen a lot.
Think of how distracted we are by the goods of the world.
So we hear the divine word, which is powerful,
powerful, meant to change your whole life,
revolutionize your life.
But then along comes the glitz and glamour
of the world.
And we start paying attention to all the glitters,
and all this superficiality
chokes off the word in us.
What are you paying attention to?
That’s the question here, I think.
What are we giving our minds and hearts to?
The glittering, passing, evanescent
goods of the world?
Or this word of God,
which is meant to take deep root?
So let me just close with this.
The Lord says,
“But the seed sown on rich soil
is the one who hears the word and understands it,
who indeed bears fruit and yields a hundred
or sixty o thirtyfold.”
See, trust me, everybody.
Trust me on this.
If you let the word of God into your mind and heart,
it will change you.
If you give it the attention it deserves,
you water it, you cultivate it,
it will grow in you and, look, yield
thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold.
It’ll make you more alive.
It’ll make you more generous.
It’ll make you more joyful.
So the word of God,
it accomplishes its purpose
if we but let it,
if we but cooperate with it.
And God bless you.