NOTES for Mar 4:1-9

The Parable of the Sower is one of the most famous of Christ's parables. It is given by all three authors of the Synoptic Gospels and therefore recurs in the cycle of liturgical readings. As in each of His parables, here too the Lord reveals to His disciples in images something essential about God and man.

It is quite clear that the image of God in this parable is the sower himself, and the seed is the word of God, as Christ Himself explains to the disciples. He does not dwell on this in detail, but it is important for us to consider every aspect of Christ's comparison of Himself with a sower sowing the word. For the sower receives no guarantees that his labor will bear the desired fruit. He, as it were, gives the seed over into the power of the earth, so that it may have the possibility of bearing fruit. And in the Gospel of John the Lord says this: unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. This is a humble and tragic image, a kind of verbal icon of the Crucified Lamb of God.

Explaining this parable to the disciples, the Lord says that the fruit we bear is ultimately determined by the qualities of ourselves, as that poor or fertile soil into which the word of God falls. Not God, but we ourselves are responsible for keeping the heart from being stone, for keeping thorns from growing thick... From the Sower's point of view, the result of His labor on the Cross depends on us. This is the highest measure of responsibility, at once unbearable and incredibly ennobling for the human person. The fruit that the Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth, will receive depends on us! For centuries people have been frightened by this responsibility, and still are. One of the most common ideas in religious systems, from antiquity to our own day, is the idea of predestination. People try to shift responsibility for the fruit borne onto the Sower Himself, thinking that some are granted to be good soil and others are not. And only God speaks the truth that determines both the measure of responsibility and the measure of human dignity in the world.