The multi-million dollar question today is: what kind of soil are you in relation to the word of God? Have you been receptive of God’s teaching? Have you been a rich soil? We all want to be the rich soil in the Gospel today, and yet the question is, what makes for rich soil?
You may have heard of the true-to-life story of one man. You can say that he was a Johnny come lately. He was born to a rich family but his mom died when he was an infant. And his father could not take this and so neglected the family including our boy. Consequently, our protagonist developed what psychologists today would call developmental issues—he had a mother issue, he never felt the feminine and nurturing love of a mother and so became hard-hearted, unfeeling, and unemotional. He also had deep father issues, hating his father for neglecting him. In fact, word was, that when his father died, he was 12 and never attended the funeral. He became rebellious, stubborn, and disrespectful to authorities. As a result of all this, he created so much problems with his family, being violent, he always figured in a brawl; he was also a womanizer and an alcoholic. One could easily say at this point in his life, that this guy, our guy would just end up a total loser; his life amounting to nothing. Like the dirty path or the rocky soil or the thorny patch in the Gospel today that bore no fruit. Perhaps. Indeed, he definitely had gone through so much tragedy in his life which affected him and turned him into what he became of.
Yet one final tragedy would change his life for the better. While fighting in a war for his beloved country, perhaps the only positive love he had then in his life, he would seriously be wounded, almost dead in fact. And yet this terrible accident would be the beginning of a new life for Ignatius of Loyola. And all that had gone before him, his tragic, bitter past, would all help to make his life a rich soil for the word of God. He would set the world on fire. But whatever the fruits that his life bore, including the Society of Jesus he founded, would only spring and grow from the very fertile soil that his life had become.
That is what makes for a rich soil. Not just irrigation or fertilizer helps. I remember when I was in grade school and in our Agriculture class, we were to take care of a garden plot, cultivate it, and plant vegetables in it. Our grades depended on our harvest at the end of the semester. Not knowing any better, I irrigated it well and tidied it up every day, pulling off the weeds and grass from the plot. But my father who was a farmer taught me, to make the soil rich, I had to integrate in the plot decaying leaves, stems, roots, even rotting fruit peels from our kitchen. The resulting aroma that the plot gave off was not your gentleman’s perfume but it did the trick. Soon, shoots were coming out of the plot and in no time, I was harvesting eggplants, ampalaya, and tomatoes. From the rich soil that was my plot.
So, what makes for a rich soil? Our entire life. Its joys and pains, its failures and triumphs, its many blessings as well as its tragedies. In all these, God is planting the seeds of a deeply rooted faith and a fruitful life. Yes, at times we have to water the soil of our life with our tears or claw deep into the ground in anger and frustration. But like Ignatius, we can only be patient. In the end, all we can do is to hope and trust through all that is given us.
And so, before you reject any parts of your life—the difficult ones, the painful, decaying, rotten or dead parts—think again. Perhaps they are the very ingredients to make the soil that is your life, rich and fertile. Our Movie Ignacio had a beautiful line at the end. The child Jesus helped Ignacio see that everything that happened to him, the bitter and the sweet, everything, was meant to bring him closer to God. AMEN.
