NOTES for Mat 13:13-15
At a certain point the Lord, who had previously proclaimed clearly to the crowds, chooses the Twelve, sends them out to preach, and chooses to speak in parables. Even the disciples noticed this and asked Him directly: why do You speak to them in parables? Evidently, this was a rather sharp change in the Savior's way of acting. In answer Christ quotes Isaiah's bitter words that we see without seeing and hear without understanding. Then He lists the sad fates of the human heart, speaking of the word that Satan snatches away, that the cares of this age choke, or that our human immaturity ruins. Perhaps the Lord's parables also have a pedagogical purpose. They are indeed images impossible to forget. But why, then, is there such sorrow in His words?
Our faith is a very simple thing. It contains Mystery, but it contains no secret doctrine and no allegories hidden from the uninitiated. Yet the simple words "love your neighbor" or "seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness" turn out to be insurmountably difficult for us. We want something special, with mysticism and obscurity, with difficult exercises and, without fail, profound thought; or else, on the contrary, give us something visible, like a theocratic state and unbroken "victories over the adversaries," since we have many adversaries and still more people who simply annoy us.
And therefore this image of the sower, who sows most of the seed without result, is inexpressibly sad. Our happiness consists in this: any one of us would long ago have stopped sowing in such hopeless conditions. Any one of us would first have found a better plot and would not have sown just anywhere. But He is God, not man. And He does not stop giving us His word. If we do not want to receive His word in simplicity, He sows in parables, so that, having received the testimony in His Blood on the Cross, we may at last open our eyes and, seeing, see, and hearing, hear and understand and turn back, so that He may heal us.