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The Easter Cycle
Prayer
O God, who seest that we put not our trust in anything that we do of ourselves; mercifully grant
that by the protection of the Doctor of the Gentiles, we may be defended against all adversities.
Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Wednesday
“The sower went out to sow his seed.” Three fourths of the seed will be unfruitful because it
falls on barren soil. That which falls on fertile ground, however, will bring forth fruit thirtyfold,
sixtyfold, and a hundredfold (Gospel).
We are dependent on the divine sower. The soil of our hearts (our spirit, our thoughts, our
will) can of itself produce nothing. Of ourselves we are incapable of the least good thought or
resolution, or of the smallest act of Christian virtue. “Not that we are sufficient to think anything
of ourselves as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God” (2 Cor 3:5). “For it is God who
worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish according to His good will” (Phil 2:13). We are
so entirely dependent on the sower that He assures us, “Without Me you can do nothing” ( Jn
15:5). Without Him we are incapable of anything but sin, and we sink in our misery as a stone
sinks in water. Without His help we are as abandoned as the victims of the Deluge, of whom
Holy Scripture says: “All the thought of their heart was bent upon evil at all times” (Gn 6:5).
“Or what hast thou that thou hast not received? And if thou hast received, why dost thou glory
as if thou hadst not received it?” (1 Cor 4:7.) We depend entirely on the divine sower to sow
the seeds of good in our hearts.
The sower comes to us to sow good seed in our hearts. First of all He plants the seed of
virtue by baptism, incorporating us in His mystical body, the Church. How often He has planted
and replanted these seeds in our hearts! He has planted it through the word of God, which is
given to us through the Church and her priesthood. He has planted again through the example
of a perfect life, in the person of His own divine Son, who is placed before us as a model: “This
is My beloved Son, . . . hear ye Him” (Mt 17:5). He has touched our hearts with grace by means
of His holy sacraments, which are the ordinary means used by God to nourish virtue. In the
sacrament of baptism our soul was bathed in the redeeming blood of the Savior and cleansed
from all stain of Original Sin, so that we might arise as new men reborn to a new life and the
sonship of God. In the sacrament of confirmation Christ renewed His grace in us and gave us
the power to grow to our full stature as children of God and heirs to the kingdom of heaven. In
the sacrament of the Eucharist, He gives us his very self; His flesh and blood become our daily
bread. He now no longer merely helps and strengthens us, He Himself lives within us by a true
physical union of His flesh and blood with ours. He has become as close to us as a vine is to its
branches. At every crucial turning point in our lives, at the moment of our greatest successes
and failures, from our youth to our old age, from the moment of our baptism to our last illness,
Christ is near, concealed in the Blessed Sacrament, but ever ready to sow the seed of His grace
in our hearts. Oh, that we had the eyes of faith to see Him sowing His seed by whispering His
divine counsel into our ear, and that we had the wisdom to profit by His advice and to heed
His warnings! Would that we had the gracefulness to thank Him for His help and the wisdom
to open our hearts wide so that the seed He sows might take deep root!
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