Good morning good people may the Lord give you peace and good health. It is on 24th January 2024.
We celebrate the Memorial of St Francis de Sales, Bishop & Doctor of the Church.
Are we occupied with God or preoccupied with the Evil one? What type of heart do we have today?
We reflect on 2 Samuel 7:4-17 and Mark 4:1-20.
God wants to bless us so abundantly as we open the doors of our hearts, and lives to God.
In the first reading, we reflect on the disturbed heart of King David looking at the presence of God being nomadic while his household was well settled down. God expresses the desire to be among God’s people through the prophet Nathan.
When we are disturbed, choked, and strangled in our lives by the way we live, and the way others treat us, we become spiritually fruitless, and we end up making no room for God.
The life of David was preoccupied with so many wars and how to clear the enemies around. He spent all his time clearing the human enemies and neglecting to befriend God and make God accessible to his spirit and personal life.
The responsorial Psalm assures the love of God, “I will keep my love for him always.” (Ps.88:29).
The Gospel presents us with the parable of the Sower and its impact, the conditions, and the receptivity of the soil either to produce or to remain unproductive.
The Word of God is the seed immaculately fertile and potentially productive that is sown every moment by God in God’s people.
When our hearts are open and prepared, we will be able to sense the truth of the teachings of Jesus. It is indeed very hard to be productive when we are too shallow and emotional to respond to the Word of God. When our hearts have become like rocks, hardened by the unjust, and evil society, it would be hard for the Word of God to have an impact.
It is the work and ingenuity of the farmer to provide the conditions suitable for the seed to be productive to the fullest. We are the farmers.
The responsibility lies in our hands to provide the means and measures to make the seed grow and bear fruit. Thorns are parasites either grow from the soil or it is dropped by other birds.
Thorns are those poky things in our lives that either grow within our hearts or that others plant in our hearts that do not allow us to grow.
The well-prepared hearts are those who not only accommodate the seed but provide every tiny resource to make the seed fruitful. What type of heart do we have today?
Each one of us knows the condition we provide for the Word of God in our lives and the provision we provide to make the seed be penetrated, peeled, and burst forth for the intended growth God himself desires.
We cannot blame the seed; we must take spiritual and moral responsibility for the failure to provide the means and measures for the seed to be fruitful and productive.
May God open our hearts to be ever-yielding hearts by love. May you have a good day.