Saturday 24th Week, Year II
Votive Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary
CMSWR National Assembly
St. Louis, Missouri
September 19 2026
We’ve often heard the parable of the sower, and like the apostles, we strive to understand it and struggle to apply it to our lives. But before engaging that struggle anew, let’s begin with an observation by Pope Leo XIV found in today’s reading from Magnificat. He observes that the Lord is unlike any farmer. A farmer sows seed only where it is likely to grow. The Lord sows the seed of his Word everywhere, including places where it seems to have little chance of growing. This does not mean that the Lord is careless, but generous.
The British poet, Walter Shewring, gives expression to God’s generosity in a hymn found in the Liturgy of the Hours:
Christ in whose passion once was sown
All virtue of all saints to be,
For the white field of these thy own
We praise the seed and sower, thee.
This morning let us praise both the Seed and the Sower!
But let us praise the Seed and the Sower by grappling with the parable. For if the parable were a map, we’d find ourselves all over it! Sometimes the devil arrives to steal the Word sown into our hearts; in the throes of temptation, that is precisely what is at stake. In time of conflict or crisis, we may be surprised by our own lack of depth; we can be like the rocky ground on which the Seed falls. The Seed is choked when are hearts are thorny in their preoccupations. In the Office of Readings for her feast day, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton captures what this can be like: “One [sister] cuts herself out a cross of pride; another, one of causeless discontent; another, impatience or peevish fretfulness.” Lest you think I am preaching to Thee and not to me, be assured that I find in my own heart by turns soil that is rocky, shallow, and thorny. The work of cultivation goes on.
And perhaps that is another way to look at the evangelical counsels. Yesterday, we considered their social dimension. Today we might focus on their role in cultivating the heart. Chastity frees the heart for undivided spousal love. It creates depth and richness in the inner soil of our hearts. Planted in such soil, the Word takes root and grows. Obedience invites the word to put down deep roots in our hearts. It gives “staying power” to our “yes” to God, especially in times of temptation, trial, and discouragement. Poverty frees us from attachment to worldly goods. It moves us from dependence on worldly means to a radical dependence on Divine Providence. It removes the thorns of worldly anxiety and possession from our hearts. Taken together, the grace that accompanies the vows spurs you onward, day by day, to cultivate your hearts for the harvest.
It is the cultivation of your hearts that makes you fruitful. The fruits are evident: hospitals, schools, universities, and countless works of charity and service. Yet these works are but the outward signs of a deeper harvest. The work entrusted to you is nothing less than the formation of the human person— forming consciences, instilling virtues, leading many to become disciples of the Lord and active members of the holy People of God. Buildings wear out. Institutions may close. Holiness lasts forever.
In his beautiful exhortation, Vita Consecrata, St. John Paul II identified Mary as the model of consecration for all time. Indeed, so pure and fertile was her inward soil that, in her, the Word became flesh and came to dwell among us. Let us ask her intercession, that the seed of God’s Word sown in us at baptism, nurtured in the Eucharist, tended in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, and deepened day by day in the living of the evangelical counsels, may bear fruit in lives of joyful witness and apostolic fruitfulness. Mary, Mother of God and Mother of the Church, pray for us!