Seed and Grace

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“He also said, ‘This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the land. Night and day, while he sleeps, when he is awake, the seed is sprouting and growing. How, he does not know. Of its own accord the land produces first the shoot, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. And when the crop is ready, at once he starts to reap, because the harvest has come” (Mark 4:26-29).

St. Mark, writing the Gospel of St. Peter, includes this description of this agricultural process, something which Our Lord liked to return to again and again, possibly something that He learned from St. Joseph.

The main message of the seed growing, night and day, “How, he does not know. Of its own accord the land produces first the shoot, then the ear”—it's a message for us that God's grace always bears fruit if we do not place obstacles in the way.

Our Lord tells us how the seed grows when it's planted in the ground. Once it has been sown, it grows independently of whether the owner of the field is asleep, or keeps watch over it, or whether he knows what causes the growth.

These words can be very encouraging, because of all the seeds we sow in the lives of our children, in the home, in the classroom, in the school, on the football field, on the volleyball court, on the hockey pitch. Every little seed of virtue that we sow, every little bit of kindness, every bit of encouragement—and children need a lot of encouragement—none of this goes to waste.

Likewise, every seed that we sow in the spiritual formation of our children, and also in the spiritual lives of those around us—the seeds we sow are growing night and day because God's grace is there, and we know with faith that all of these seeds will eventually bear fruit.

The seeds of grace sown in our own souls are just like that. There might be something we remember that a parent or a teacher said many years ago in the dim and distant past, or some anecdote will come back to us from some Standard Two class or something some uncle or grandmother said, but eventually, it all bears fruit.

If we don't place any obstacles in its way, if we allow it to grow, that fruit will come. It doesn't depend on the person who does the sowing, or the person doing the reaping. St. Paul to the Corinthians says, “God gives the growth” (cf. 1 Cor. 3:6-7).

We sow the seeds, and then we leave everything in God's hands. We pray for the fruits. T. S. Eliot, the famous writer, says, “Ours is only the trying. The rest is none of our business” (T. S. Eliot, Collected Poems).

God is using us as His instruments in the lives of, sometimes, very few people immediately around us, and sometimes in the lives of millions, and the social influence that we try to have by living our lives as upright Christians. God uses this as a great seed in the sowing in the other souls around us.

It gives us great confidence in carrying out our apostolate to consider frequently that, as St. Josemaría says in Christ Is Passing By, “the teaching, the message which we have to communicate, has in its own right an infinite effectiveness which comes not from us, but from Christ” (Josemaría Escrivá, Christ Is Passing By, Point 159).

There's an 82-year-old Loreto sister, an Irish Loreto sister here in Nairobi, who tells a story of how when she was in a kindergarten school, a missionary came back from Africa and was going around different kindergarten schools, talking about little children in Africa who didn't know Jesus, and asking the little children to pray for those little children in Africa who didn't know Jesus.

This six-year-old little girl was very taken with this. Looking back now, she says, “I think that was the beginning of my vocation. Many years later, I tried looking for that priest or finding out who he might have been, because he sowed the seeds of vocation in my soul. He asked us to go home to our parents and ask them if the last decade of the Rosary each night could be for the little children in Africa who didn't know Jesus.”

She went home to her mum, and her mother said, “No, the last decade is for the Pope, but it can be the second last.” They began to pray the second last decade of the Rosary each night for the little children in Africa who didn't know Jesus.

Now she has spent sixty years of her life teaching in a school in Africa and running many other schools. The seeds of that priest talking to those little children are yielding abundant fruit. And here we are talking about it almost 100 years later—well, not quite—seventy years later.

We don't know how God is going to use us, or how He's going to use the seeds that we sow or the seeds that other people have sown in the lives of people around us, which over time can bear fruit in our own lives.

This can fill us with an awful lot of hope. It can bring about a deep transformation in our souls, because that grace is always at work, whether we are aware or whether we're not aware.

That can cause us to constantly make resolutions to be faithful, to begin and to begin again, in spite of our miseries or our failures.

St. Josemaría placed great emphasis on that process of beginning and beginning again. He said the whole of our interior life is a process of “beginning and beginning again” (J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 384).

We fail here, we fail there, we fall down, but we get up again, like Our Lord on the way to Calvary. That doesn't matter. Grace is at work all the time.

That can lead us to give ourselves more fully and to try to correspond more fervently with the grace that God gives us; also, in the course of our life, to have a deeper hunger for that grace that comes to us in the sacraments.

His grace is acting in us at this moment while we're praying, while you're listening to this meditation.

God constantly offers us His grace to help us to be faithful in fulfilling the little duty of each moment. What is God asking of me in this particular moment as I go through the day? He lets us know His Will so that we can become saints by fulfilling that Will faithfully.

On our part, we have to try and accept this help from God and cooperate with generosity and docility.

Sometimes God may permit great crosses in our lives. I heard a story today of a mother who lost a grown-up daughter in some tragedy in another country. She immediately responded with the words, “I forgive, I forgive.”

God can always give us the graces to react in a supernatural way to the apparent tragedies that may take place in our lives.

In our soul as in our body, something similar happens: our lungs need to take in oxygen constantly so as to renew our blood. Anyone who does not breathe dies of suffocation. One writer says anyone who does not accept with docility the grace that God constantly gives us ends by dying of spiritual suffocation (Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, The Three Ages of the Interior Life, Vol. 1).

Receiving grace with docility means being determined to fulfill all that the Holy Spirit suggests to us in the depths of our heart. He's always speaking to us.

It means trying to fulfill our duties as perfectly as possible; first of all, in all those things that relate to our commitment towards God, even if we find it difficult., too much, or we fail again and again. We're like little children learning to walk. They stand up and then they fall down, they stand up and they fall down.

We have those very encouraging words of Our Lord, who tells us: “Unless you become like little children, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3).

No matter how difficult we might find the way that God has placed out for us, there's grace there to help us carry on in that way.

Sometimes we have to make up our minds to acquire a specific virtue that may be, or may seem, out of reach. We try again and again to bear, with supernatural graciousness and simplicity, some setback or other, without losing our peace, without getting angry, without letting everyone around us know that we're upset.

We try to live out the peace of Christ in all those moments, no matter how long that setback may last or how difficult we may find it. God moves us interiorly, and often He may remind us of the advice that we have received in spiritual direction, because the Holy Spirit is there.

The more faithful that we are to such grace, the better disposed we will be to receive further grace, the easier we will find it to do good deeds, and the happier we will be, because happiness is always related to the way we correspond with grace.

We have to be docile to the inspirations of the Holy Spirit if we are to preserve our life of grace and be supernaturally effective.

As Our Lord tells us in the parable, the seed sown in our hearts has sufficient strength to germinate, to grow, and to bear fruit. Our Lord's examples can be very powerful.

“The seed is sprouting and growing,” He says. “Of its own accord the land produces first the shoot, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. And when the crop is ready, at once he starts to reap, because the harvest has come” (cf. Mark 4:27-29).

First of all, we have to enable the seed to reach our heart. We have to make room for it within us, to accept it, not put it to one side, because the opportunities that God gives us don't wait.

If on some occasion in our prayer or during our spiritual reading, we get an idea, or walking along the street, some idea hits us that's related to our spiritual life, it's a very good idea to write those ideas down. Bring them further to your prayer.

Or some advice that you're given in spiritual direction, write it down. It might not seem particularly relevant at this particular moment. But with the passage of time, the graces of the Holy Spirit and the lights of the Holy Spirit become ever more and more relevant and fruitful.

St. John Henry Newman says, “The opportunities that God gives us…they come and they go. The word of life does not tarry.” We've got to catch the wind while it's blowing. “If we don't catch hold of it, the devil can bear it away” (John Henry Newman, Sermon for Sexagesima Sunday: Calls of Grace).

Maybe that seed is going to be a very important seed. “The devil is not lazy; rather does he always have his eyes open, and he's ever ready to spring, and to snatch away the gift that you do not use” (ibid.).

We need to live a series of little things. The little mortification of tidying up after our work. The little effort to get to Confession on the particular day that we have fixed. Examining our conscience in sufficient depth so that we can be aware of where we're falling and of what God wants us to fight on the next day.

Living the heroic minute in the morning—getting up on time. Changing the conversation or at least keeping silent when someone is being criticized in their absence.

Resistance to grace, says one writer, produces the same effect in the soul as “hail beating on a tree in blossom which gave hopes of bearing much fruit; but the blossom is spoilt and the fruit does not ripen” (Garrigou-Lagrange, loc. cit.). Our interior life can wane and die.

We cannot keep count of all the times the Holy Spirit grants us the grace to avoid deliberate venial sin, and also all those faults which, without properly being sins, are displeasing to God. The saints are the people who have responded with the greatest sensitivity to that supernatural help.

Neither can we keep count of all the graces we receive to help us sanctify the actions of our ordinary life, carrying them on with determination, with perfection, and with purity of intention, for supernatural reasons as well as for human ones.

If we are faithful from morning to night to the help that we receive, we will have filled each day with acts of love of God and neighbor, at both the pleasant moments and at those times when perhaps we felt tired and had less strength and enthusiasm.

All these actions help to make us effective. One grace leads to another. We are told in St. Mark, “For to him who has, will more be given” (Mark 4:25). The soul is strengthened in goodness to the extent that it practices goodness; it depends on the distance it tries to cover.

Each day is a great gift that God gives us. He wants us to fill it with love by corresponding cheerfully with His grace and by not being surprised at any difficulties or setbacks. He wants us to count on His help to overcome such obstacles and use them so that they will urge us on to holiness and apostolate. Everything is very different when we do it with love and for love.

We also have to try and avoid any discouragement that might arise when our defects don't disappear and we come to realize that we have failed to acquire certain virtues. Constantly we have to start again.

“A person scatters the seed on the ground when he forms a good resolution in his heart...and the seed germinates and grows without his realizing it, even though he cannot be expected to be aware of its growth.

“Once virtue is conceived,” says St. Gregory the Great, “it journeys towards perfection, and the ground bears fruit of itself because, with the help of grace, a man's soul rises up spontaneously to do good. But the earth produces first the blade, then the stalk, and finally the ear of grain” (Gregory the Great, Homilies on Ezekiel).

Interior life needs time. It grows and ripens like wheat in a field.

Faithfulness to the impulses God wants us to have is also shown by our avoiding discouragement at our failures and the impatience that comes when we still find it hard to finish our prayer with depth, or to root out a defect, or to think of God often during our work.

The farmer is patient. He doesn't dig up the seed or abandon the field because he has not found the fruit he expected within a certain time.

Farmers know well that they must work and wait. They hope to have periods of warmth and sunshine, and maybe they hope for rain also. They know that the seed is coming to maturity, “he knows not how,” and that harvest time will come.

In Furrow, Point 668, St. Josemaría says, “Grace, like nature, normally acts gradually. We cannot, properly speaking, move ahead of grace. But in all that does depend on us we have to prepare the way and cooperate when God grants grace to us.

“Souls have to be encouraged to aim very high; they have to be impelled towards Christ's ideal. Lead them to the highest goals which should not be scaled down or made less lofty in any way.

“But remember that sanctity is not primarily worked out with one's own hands. Grace normally takes its time, and is not normally inclined to act with violence or irresistible force. Encourage your holy impatience, but do not lose your patience.”

Just as the farmer, with the wisdom of centuries, does not lose his patience, we must learn to aim very high in sanctity and apostolate, waiting for the right moment, without ever losing heart. We will frequently have to start again with our unmodified ambitious resolution.

We need to be able to wait and to struggle with patient perseverance, with the conviction that overcoming a defect or acquiring a virtue does not normally depend on sporadic and violent effort, but on humble constancy in the struggle, the constancy of trying time and time again, counting on God's mercy.

We cannot, because of impatience, cease to be faithful to the grace we receive. That impatience, generally, can have its roots in pride. “We have to be patient with everyone,” St. Francis de Sales says, “but first of all with ourselves” (Francis de Sales, Letters).

Nothing is beyond remedy for the person who hopes in the Lord; nothing is totally lost. We always have the possibility of being forgiven, and of beginning again; humility, sincerity, repentance ... Then we begin again.

We have to correspond with God, who is determined that we should overcome all obstacles. We can experience deep joy each time that we begin again, and during our time on earth, we will have to do that many, many times, because we will always have faults, deficiencies, weaknesses, and sins.

We must be humble and patient. God allows for our failures, but He also expects many little victories from us throughout our lives, victories that we carry off each time we are faithful to an inspiration, to a motion of the Holy Spirit.

St. Augustine says, “They are those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bring forth fruit with patience” (St. Augustine, Sermon 101).

All are capable of giving abundant fruits to the Lord, regardless of their past history. God is always sowing the seed of His grace.

“The most important thing is not to become like a much-trodden path, like outcrop rock, like thistles. … We have to become good ground. … The heart cannot be fair game for birds and passers-by. It has to provide enough ground for the seed to take root. The sun of human passions and a dissolute life should not scorch the seedlings of divine promise” (ibid.).

The three prerequisites for our becoming good ground: to listen with a contrite and humble heart, to be earnest in prayer and mortification, and, finally, to be ready to begin and begin again in the interior struggle. We can't let ourselves become discouraged if the fruits of our struggle are not readily apparent, even after many years of effort.

“A new heart I will give you,” we're told, “and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezek. 36:26).

If we're willing to change our ways, Our Lord is more than willing to transform us into ‘good ground.’ He will bring this about in the deepest recesses of our being.

The grace of God is all-powerful. The crucial thing is to return again and again to His side. St. Augustine teaches, “God is a farmer and if he abandons man, man becomes a desert. Man is also a farmer and if he leaves God, he turns himself into a desert as well” (St. Augustine, Commentary on Psalm 145).

We can resolve never to be separated from Our Lord and to have recourse to His merciful heart many times each day.

Our Lady, who is the Mediatrix of all graces, will help all those graces to yield abundant fruit in the good soil that she wants each one of us to be.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

EW