(LifeSiteNews) — I love the parables of Jesus. He drew his examples from the lived experience of those who followed Him during His public ministry. Those early disciples were used to the pattern of preparing the soil in the fields, planting the seed, and reaping the crops.

It has taken me many years to even begin to grasp the meaning.

That is partly because I grew up in the inner city of Boston. However, I called beautiful southeastern Virginia home for much of my adult life. We had a lot of beautiful fields around the parish I used to serve. Farming is still an integral part of the pattern of life for many, and the local economy benefits greatly from their work.

The meaning of the agrarian parables Jesus used became increasingly clear as I watched those fields become green every spring. Of course, preceding all of this, there were those barren-looking fields, seemingly lifeless before the seed is even sown. Preparing the ground for the seed involves hard work, cooperative weather, and the goodness of the God who created this beautiful and fruitful world.

I have come to understand the work that is involved in cultivating the soil, selecting and sowing the seed and then praying for cooperative weather while caring for the nascent crops. This has happened to me vicariously: through the farmers I have come to serve and know in my years of ministry – and now, my second oldest daughter and son-in-law. My admiration for their work has grown immensely.

So too has my gratitude for the goodness and grace of God the Creator and Father who loves us all so much that He sent His Son to save us and make us new. He has sown the seed of His Word and His kingdom within each one of us. The results also invite our response, our free choice. Whether that seed will find ripe soil is certainly affected by our willing cooperation with His grace.

As we choose to respond to that grace, and surrender ourselves to His care, formation, and assignment in the fields of the world, our life changes, and so do we. In Matthew’s account of the parable of the sower and the seed, Jesus explains the parable to His disciples with these words:

Hear then the parable of the sower. The seed sown on the path is the one who hears the word of the kingdom without understanding it, and the evil one comes and steals away what was sown in his heart.

The seed sown on rocky ground is the one who hears the word and receives it at once with joy. But he has no root and lasts only for a time. When some tribulation or persecution comes because of the word, he immediately falls away.

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. 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 or thirtyfold. (Matt. 13:1-23)

St. Luke emphasizes that the kingdom of God spreads in this world in his account of the parable:

Jesus said, ‘What is the kingdom of God like? To what can I compare it? It is like a mustard seed that a man took and planted in the garden. When it was fully grown, it became a large bush and the birds of the sky dwelt in its branches.’

Again he said, ‘To what shall I compare the kingdom of God? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of wheat flour until the whole batch of dough was leavened.’ (Luke 13:18-21)

The images of seed which is sown in a field speaks to every one of us and the way we live our daily lives. St. Josemaría Escrivá reflected on this fact in a profound homily which he concluded with this hope:

May Our Lord be able to use us so that, placed as we are at all the cross-roads of the world – and at the same time placed in God – we become salt, leaven and light. Yes, you are to be in God, to enlighten, to give flavor, to produce growth and new life. But don’t forget that we are not the source of this light: we only reflect it. (St. Josemaría Escrivá, Friends of God, 250)

We are both the soil and the seed in these agrarian parables.

The Living Word has been sown within us, so we must cultivate the ground of our hearts in order to be transformed by grace and more fully reflect the image and likeness of God. We are called to grow in holiness and reflect the risen life of Jesus Christ to a world waiting to be born again.

Then we are the seed, placed in His Holy, blood-stained Hands, being spread into the world which He still loves so much that He sends His Son, through the Church, the Body of Christ, of which we are members. (John 3:16, 1 Cor. 12:27)

The world which was created through the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Word of the Father, is now being re-created in and through the Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ. We are living seeds of His kingdom being spread in the garden of the world.

In a beautiful collection of homilies which were given by St. Josemaría Escrivá entitled Christ is Passing By, this saint of the real man or woman living in the real world explained that we are the grain, the seed of the kingdom, which is being spread by the Lord Jesus in order to reap a crop for the kingdom:

Jesus, as we were saying, is the sower, and he goes about his task by means of us Christians. Christ presses the grain in his wounded hands, soaks it in his blood, cleans it, purifies it, and throws it into the furrows, into the world. He plants the seeds one by one so that each Christian in his own setting can bear witness to the fruitfulness of the death and resurrection of the Lord.

If we are in Christ’s hands, we should absorb his saving blood and let ourselves be cast on the wind. We should accept our life as God wants it. And we should be convinced that the seed must be buried and die if it is to be fruitful. Then the shoots start to appear, and the grain. And from the grain, bread is made which is changed by God into the body of Christ. In this way we once more become united with Jesus, our sower. ‘Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.’ (Christ is Passing By, 157)