Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this homily for the 15^th Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year A) on July 12, 2020 at St. Austin Catholic Parish in Austin, TX. The homily is based on the day’s readings: Isaiah 55:10-11; Psalm 65; Romans 8:18-23; and Matthew 13:1-9.One of the most distinctive features of the Gospel of Matthew is the many parables. Let’s remember: a parable is a story with an unexpected twist that defies a simple explanation. Over the next three weekends, we will hear seven (or eight, depending how you count) parables in which Jesus describes the kingdom of heaven and the nature of what it means to be Church.

Today, we’ll hear one of the most familiar parables, about the sower and the seed. However, more than any other parable, we’ve heard a simple, cut-and-dried explanation of what it means. But scholars agree: the explanation given in the Bible does not seem to be in the language of Jesus. It was most likely written by Christians a generation later. So today – brace yourselves – I’m asking Deacon Dan to proclaim the SHORT version of this parable, without the explanation. Let’s open ourselves up to exploring the depth and complexity of what Jesus is trying to teach us.

Over the next three weekends, Jesus will challenge us to expand our ideas of who is included in the Church. May God make us more open to share his merciful love with others!

My first preaching coach said that the worst homilies she ever heard were based on this gospel passage. If you proclaim the explanation of what this parable means – even though the explanation was written by early Christians long after Jesus told the parable – for heaven’s sake, said Sr. Pat, don’t spend your homily rehashing that explanation again!

Yes, the explanation says that the seed is the Word of God, and the first three places that the seed falls are individuals who, for one reason or another, do not allow the Word of God to grow within them. But does that mean that God has created people who don’t have the ability to nurture the Word of God? I think all of us have areas in our lives where we’re resistant to accepting the challenge of the gospel. But God declares in Isaiah that the Word will surely accomplish its destiny. Likewise, Paul assures the Romans that God will ultimately reconcile the universe to its creative purpose. Let’s not dismiss other people – or ourselves – too easily. As Isaiah has previously declared, “Every valley shall be raised up, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places a plain.” If God is with us, then surely we can pull a weed or two, and God might even help us with the big ones.

many of us think we don’t have the knowledge, the time, or the talent to keep growing in our faith, but with the help of the rest of our church community, we all have the necessary resources. God only knows when we’ll be able to return to church in large numbers safely, but we on the St. Austin Parish staff do know something: the way we nurture the Word of God in our lives is going to be different for quite a while. St. Austin Catholic School is still pursuing multiple contingencies for instruction in the upcoming academic year. But no matter what the school does, we have reached the conclusion that there is no way for us to safely conduct Sunday faith formation classes on our campus this coming year. 

Faith formation will be happening off campus next year… and possibly the next two years after that, too. While the St. Austin development project is not a done deal, there is a real possibility that we’ll be tearing down most of our meeting rooms next summer and won’t have new facilitates until the fall of 2023. 

Change – and this is a big change – can be scary. Whether or not we’re parents of school-aged children, we’re all struggling with how very different life is right now. We know there are some unexpected blessings in this strange time, but it sure seems as if the soil is getting shallower and rockier, rather than deeper and richer. If you’re a parent who has struggled to help your children through online schooling this past semester, and you’re facing the possibility of having to do it again this fall, the last thing you probably want to hear is that we at St. Austin are asking you to be the primary faith formation teachers for your kids, too! Before I was born, my mother had been an elementary school teacher for 11 years. And even she resented when my teachers sent projects home from school that required her participation!

But like many other aspects of the pandemic, perhaps we’ve been given an opportunity for us to re-examine the way we do things. This may be a way for our whole community – not just our children in Faith Formation – to find new ways to tend to the Word of God growing in our hearts. First of all, on Sunday mornings, as every room on our campus was being used for children’s Faith Formation, we weren’t able to offer many faith formation opportunities for adults. Perhaps we can harness the power of the internet to provide those. But second of all, and much more importantly, perhaps we can better live out what the Church has said for a very long time: the main place for faith formation should be in the family; classroom instruction should be seen as supplemental, not the primary source for learning about the faith. There was a time not all that long ago in St. Austin Parish’s history when we did faith formation in family groups, and lots of parishioners tell us that they thought it was a superior experience to gathering children in classrooms away from the rest of their families. 

Looking back, I wish my home parish’s CCD program had sent things home. Because my mom was Catholic and my dad was from a Calvinist tradition, we never discussed religion at home, even though I now realize that both of my parents were devoted to their faith. (True story: when I applied to the seminary, my mother worried that I would not be accepted because she hadn’t taught me enough about the faith!) Maybe my faith would have blossomed sooner if I didn’t wait until college to start discussing my questions of faith with other people!

We don’t expect anyone in our parish to be experts on the Catechism of the Catholic Church or on the science and art of pedagogy, let alone overburdened school parents. That’s why Rachel Vaughn and our team of catechists stand at the ready to support our families in any way that they can, with lots of different resources to fit families’ particular circumstances and parenting styles. If you were involved in St. Austin’s Faith Formation program last year, you should have received an electronic survey this past week to start the process of determining how best to approach family-based faith formation. If you didn’t receive the survey, or if would like to be involved in ongoing faith formation – whether or not you’re a parent of school-aged children – please contact Rachel as soon as possible.

St. Teresa of Avila was one of the first women ever to be declared a Doctor of the Church, and that was because of her deep insights into the life of faith. Teresa famously wrote that prayer can be like watering a garden. At first, nurturing the Word of God in our lives can feel as burdensome as hauling heavy buckets of water out of a well. Then, with practice, it becomes like having water wheel to bring the water up for easier carrying. Later on, it becomes like having irrigation ditches where it just takes a little effort to direct the water. But the best way to water a garden, says Teresa, is to let God provide the water. As Isaiah says: “Just as… the rain and snow come down and do not return there till they have watered the earth,… so shall my word… do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it.”

Preview photo credit: Jon Ross/CC BY-ND 2.0