Jan 26: The Seed that is Sown

Vincent Van Gogh: Sower with the Setting Sun
Rijksmuseum Krueller-Mueller, Otterlo, 1888

Memorial of Saint Timothy and Saint Titus, bishops

Gospel: Mk 4:1-20

“Other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold (NRSV, Mk 4:8).”

Father, we lift up our minds and hearts to pray to you for so many things. We praise your name and give you glory and thanks but we also beg you to come to help us in our need. We pray especially for those who cannot help themselves, the children of the world, many of whom are desperate for food in order to survive. We pray also for those who care for them in their need, and for all who hunger. We pray as well for those who are terminally ill and in great pain or who suffer mental anguish. We look to you to send good weather and sufficient rain for plentiful harvests the world over. We ask you to care for victims of natural disasters like the recent tsunami. Most of all we pray for peace among nations and peoples.

How strange it is when we finally realize that you do not answer our prayers, Lord, not that you ignore them, but that you anticipate them. In every situation, even before we pray, you send your Word to us, even Jesus in the flesh, that your Word may be the instrument not only of our creation but of opening us to the reception of your Holy Spirit. Your Spirit bestows upon us life, divine life, that brings with it great power, power to confront all of lives difficulties and to overcome them. Fortified by the power of your divine life, given in the Spirit through your Word, even the passage through physical death becomes for us, as for Jesus, an hour of glory.

Finally only each of us can say “yes” to the gift of your life that you bestow upon us, but your life that you share with us is one, as your are one, and by our concern for each other we can mediate your one life to sister and brother. Your life always brings healing and wholeness and we can awaken your healing power in others through our prayers and active concern.

How strange it is when we realize that our prayers cannot change you, Father, but that they can change us so that the seed, which your Word sows, can take hold in us and bear fruit in healing and good works. There is nothing for which we pray, Lord, but that through your Word you challenge us to carry it out. May we always be open, Lord, to the seed that is sown in us that it may ripen and come to full maturity as we give our lives in service of our sisters and brothers.

Through Christ our Lord. Amen.