Daily Reading
First Reading
1 Timothy 6:13-16
In the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you to keep the commandment without spot or blame until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will bring about at the right time — he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords. It is he alone who has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see; to him be honour and eternal dominion. Amen.
Psalm
Psalm 100:1-2, 3, 4, 5
Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come into his presence with singing. Know that the Lord is God; it is he that made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him; bless his name. For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.
Gospel Reading
Luke 8:4-15
A sower went out to sow his seed; and as he sowed, some fell on the path and was trampled on, and the birds of the air ate it up. Some fell on rock, and when they grew up, they withered for lack of moisture. Some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew with it and choked it. And some fell into good soil and grew and yielded a hundred-fold. As he said this, he called out, “Let anyone with ears to hear listen!” Then the disciples asked him what this parable meant. He said, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God; but to others I speak in parables, so that ‘looking they may not perceive, and hearing they may not understand.’ Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. The ones on the path are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved. Those on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy. But these have no root; they believe for a while, and in time of testing fall away. As for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature. But that in the good soil are those who, hearing the word with a good and generous heart, hold it fast and bear fruit with endurance.
Reflection
Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus explains the purpose of the parables: “Knowledge of the mysteries of the Kingdom of God has been granted to you; but to the rest, they are made known through parables so that they may look but not see, and hear but not understand.”
The use of the word “para” in the New Testament (translated as “beside,” “against,” “contrary to,” etc.) signals the failure to see at various levels. The great metaphor here is blindness, a blindness which is identified with disobedience.
The parables of Christ are meant to highlight and point out this blindness, this willful refusal to see. They themselves, in their peculiar form, are judgments on those who cannot see in them signs of salvation.
The parables are often exercises whose purpose is to confuse and confound the hearer, overturning her expectations and upsetting her theological convictions. A parable does its work by turning our ordinary conception of the spiritual world upside down. And we would be greatly remiss if we did not attend to the instruction that emerges from those startling, funny, off-putting, and strangely enlightening stories that Jesus loved to tell.