Wednesday in the 17th Week of Ordinary Time, July 31, 2024

Matthew 13, 44-46

Jesus said to his disciples: “The Kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field, which a person finds and hides again, and out of joy goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the Kingdom of heaven is like a merchant searching for fine pearls. When he finds a pearl of great price, he goes and sells all that he has and buys it.”

These little similitudes the Lord uses can be understood as a human being who finds him, or the Lord finding the human, his lost sheep.  In the first case, someone finds the treasure or the pearls, recognizes their worth as surpassing anything that he already owns, and then essentially trades what he has in order to possess the treasure or pearls.  That is, the person finds the Lord Jesus, becomes enamored of him and his teachings, realizes that what he has impedes him from possessing the Lord entirely, and gives that up “out of joy” for his sake.  We notice that the person “finds” or comes upon the treasure.  He may not have been looking for it but still he finds it.  It is hidden, so that others do not recognize it.  This treasure is the Son of God, who joins himself to a human nature so as to be like us in all things but sin.  Many people saw him during his lifetime or have learned about him afterwards who did not understand his value, who did not take him seriously, who were too busy to give him much time.  These “crowded” against him as though on a narrow street but kept going their own way, paying him little notice (Mark 5, 30-31).  But a humble person, with eyes cast to the ground like the repentant tax collector (cf. Luke 18, 13), notices him, and recognizes his voice the way a sheep recognizes its herder’s voice (John 10, 27).  This voice is very different from all the others.  

But to fully possess the Lord, a person needs to repent, do penance, and turn away from evil habits and companions.  He takes Jesus as his Master and obeys his will from now on, aligning his own will with that of the Lord.  This treasure, these pearls, provide him with all that a person could want: they give him rest from his troubles, peace to his soul, purpose for his life, good companions, the knowledge that he is loved absolutely by the One who made him, and the promise of eternal life in the world to come: “The Lord is my Shepherd, and I want for nothing.  He has set me in a place of pasture.  He has led me to refreshing waters.  He has restored my soul. He has led me on the paths of justice, for his own name’s sake . . . and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” (Psalm 23, 1-3, 6).

We can also understand these similes as the Lord looking for us.  Particularly in the simile of the merchant searching for pearls we see that the Lord is on his hands and knees looking through the whole of humanity, getting himself muddy on the shore of this world in order to find someone who will return his love.  Through how many lots of oysters has he looked before, though in vain!  But he finally finds one who will love him, and he promptly gives himself up to him.  So many people know of the Lord and even count themselves as among his followers, but only follow when it suits them or does not conflict with their interests and schedules.  In the end, they will be cast aside while the true follower is held in the hand of Almighty God, who counts himself rich for possessing him.

 Tuesday in the 17th Week of Ordinary Time, July 30, 2024

Matthew 13, 36-43

Jesus dismissed the crowds and went into the house. His disciples approached him and said, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field.” He said in reply, “He who sows good seed is the Son of Man, the field is the world, the good seed the children of the Kingdom. The weeds are the children of the Evil One, and the enemy who sows them is the Devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels. Just as weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his Kingdom all who cause others to sin and all evildoers. They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father. Whoever has ears ought to hear.”

In the Gospel reading for today’s Mass, the Lord explains the parable which he told in Matthew 13, 24-30.  He reveals to his Apostles, through his explanation, the workings of Divine Providence: that all things inescapably work together for the accomplishment of God’s will.

“The good seed [is] the children of the Kingdom.”  These “children” are of the Kingdom of heaven.  They are the ones whom Almighty God has foreseen, from all eternity, will belong to him: the men, women, and children who will avail themselves of the graces won for them by the Lord Jesus and who will choose to live for him, according to his commandments.   On the other hand, “the weeds are the children of the Evil One.”  They are said to be the devil’s “children” because they imitate the devil in his pride, his malice and in his evil works: “You are of your father the devil: and the desires of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning: and he stood not in the truth, because truth is not in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of lies” (John 8, 44).  The “children of the Kingdom” practice virtue and seek the conversion of the wicked; “the children of the Evil One” seek to corrupt and destroy those who love God.  No one and no thing compels a person to do evil, anymore than a person can be forced to perform virtuous acts.  Just as in the case with the “children of the Kingdom”, so Almighty God foresees those who will reject him and act wickedly.  

The Lord Jesus explains that the “field” is the world.  If this is so, why are there only two kinds of plants in it, the wheat and the weeds?  Does it not stand that there would be room for, say, the indifferent?  The Lord speaks to this: “He that is not with me, is against me: and he that gathers not with me, scatters” (Matthew 12, 30).  Almighty God desires the salvation of all, but he will not force anyone to be saved.  Love cannot be forced from a person with free will, nor can anyone be forced to be happy.  Therefore, it is right and just that “all who cause others to sin and all evildoers” will be cast “into the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”  To those appalled by the unimaginable suffering of the wicked, and who cannot reconcile this with a God of love and mercy, we should say that it is no mercy for the wicked to be forced into heaven.  As John Henry Newman noted, it would be greater suffering for the wicked to see the bliss of heaven enjoyed by the saints than for them to burn in hell forever.

“Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father.”  They shall shine in their goodness, for they will wear the immaculate robes of their good deeds.  As St. John writes, “For the marriage of the Lamb is come: and his Bride [the saints] has prepared herself.  And it is granted to her that she should clothe herself with fine linen, glittering and white. For the fine linen is the righteousness of the saints” (Revelation 19, 7-8).  

“Whoever has ears ought to hear.”  With this idiom, the Lord advises his Apostles not only to hear and understand his words, but to take them to heart: for the Hebrew word that is translated as “to hear” also has the meaning of “to obey”.

 Monday in the 17th Week of Ordinary Time, July 29, 2024

The Feast of Saints Märtha, Mary, and Lazarus

John 11, 19-27

Many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them about their brother [Lazarus, who had died]. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him; but Mary sat at home.  Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.  But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise.”  Martha said to him, “I know he will rise, in the resurrection on the last day.”  Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and anyone who lives and believes in me will never die.  Do you believe this?”  She said to him, “Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.”

From the three accounts in the Gospels which involve Lazarus, Martha, and Mary, we can see their close connection to the Lord.  In Luke 10, 38-42, Jesus enters “Martha’s house” and talks to an enraptured Mary while Martha struggles to prepare dinner.  It would seem from this that either Martha and Mary owned the house outright or that it was the house of Lazarus, whom Luke did not write about, and that Martha and Mary lived there.  We are not told that Martha or Mary were married, so if the house was theirs, they might have been widows.  It could also be the case that Luke does not mention spouses or Lazarus in order to keep his story simple, because the presence or absence of anyone except Martha, Mary, and Jesus does not affect the main point.  

In John 11, 1, the Evangelist tells us, “Now, there was a certain man sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany, of the town of Mary and of Martha her sister.”  The implication here is that the three siblings did not live together, but separately.  A further implication is that these three were well-known to the Jewish Christian community in Jerusalem to whom John was writing his Gospel, for the names of those for whom Jesus performs miracles are almost never given.  John also here identifies Mary of Bethany, sister of Lazarus, as “she who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair”.  He mentions this even before he tells the story of how she did this (which he would do in the chapter following that in which he tells of the raising of Lazarus) leading us to believe that the story was very well-known at the time of his writing.

The Lord loved these three, as is clear from the story of his raising Lazarus from the dead.  Indeed, when the sisters notify the Lord that their brother is in need of healing, they say, “Lord, behold, he whom you love is sick.”  And John comments, “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister Mary and Lazarus.”  They firmly believed in him as the Messiah, and as one with great power.  When the Lord arrives in Bethany, Martha says to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But now also I know that whatsoever you will ask of God, God will give to you.”  And Mary will say to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”  Mary’s faith and her gratitude for the Lord raising up her brother bring her to anoint his feet with a very expensive perfume, and to wipe his feet with her hair.  (This anointing is distinct, though similar, from that done by the sinful woman in Luke 7, 36-50, which took place in Simon the Leper’s house, not in that of Lazarus.)  

“Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.”  This profession of faith spoken by Martha, reflected the faith of her brother and sister as well.  No one but Peter would make such a profession before the Lord’s Resurrection.  We pray to Saint Martha, that she might obtain for us the grace to be filled with such faith as hers; to her sister Mary, that we may become as dedicated to the Word of God as she; and to Lazarus, that we may hear the Lord saying to us at the moment of our deaths, “Come forth!”, summoning us into his life in heaven.

 The 17th Sunday of Ordinary Time, July 28, 2024

John 6, 1–15

Jesus went across the Sea of Galilee. A large crowd followed him, because they saw the signs he was performing on the sick. Jesus went up on the mountain, and there he sat down with his disciples. The Jewish feast of Passover was near. When Jesus raised his eyes and saw that a large crowd was coming to him, he said to Philip, “Where can we buy enough food for them to eat?” He said this to test him, because he himself knew what he was going to do. Philip answered him, “Two hundred days’ wages worth of food would not be enough for each of them to have a little.” One of his disciples, Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, said to him, “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what good are these for so many?” Jesus said, “Have the people recline.” Now there was a great deal of grass in that place. So the men reclined, about five thousand in number. Then Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed them to those who were reclining, and also as much of the fish as they wanted. When they had had their fill, he said to his disciples, “Gather the fragments left over, so that nothing will be wasted.” So they collected them, and filled twelve wicker baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves that had been more than they could eat. When the people saw the sign he had done, they said, “This is truly the Prophet, the one who is to come into the world.” Since Jesus knew that they were going to come and carry him off to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain alone.

For the next four Sundays (making five consecutive Sundays altogether) the Gospel Reading will be taken from the sixth chapter of the Gospel according to St. John.  Because of this arrangement in the Lectionary we will be able to study in detail the words and events related to the Lord’s feeding of the five thousand And his revelation of his Body as the Bread of Life.  It is profitable and necessary for us to do this because the mystery of the Lord’s Body and Blood lies at the very center of our Catholic Faith.

The feeding of the five thousand occurred in the months just before the Lord’s Death on the Cross, a fact which ought to be borne in mind when we read his subsequent words on his Body and Blood, and how the he gives these to us to be consumed so that we might have eternal life.

“Where can we buy enough food for them to eat?”  St. John tells us the Lord asked Philip this question in order to “test” him, that is, to teach him by drawing the correct answer from him, step by step.  This was a standard pedagogical method at that time.  John only gives us the first step with Philip, but we can assume from what follows that Jesus did not get the answer he wanted from him.  Next, the Lord tested Andrew, who does better: “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what good are these for so many?”  Andrew follows the Lord’s question with a suggestion, as the method required.  The Lord approves of his answer and so tells him, “Have the people recline.”  That is, not sit, but recline — the posture for eating in those days.  And this was possible because “there was a great deal of grass in that place.”

“Then Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed them.”  He gives thanks to the Father in order to teach us to give thanks for the earthly food as well as the spiritual food we receive from him, which the bread signifies.  He distributed the bread and the dried fish through the Apostles, allowing them to share in his work of feeding the multitude.  “They collected them, and filled twelve wicker baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves that had been more than they could eat.”  The amount of food leftover far surpassed the original five loaves and two fish.  The people realized that this was a sign, and they decided that the sign indicated that Jesus was the new Moses, who fed the Hebrews in the Sinai wilderness with manna from heaven.  This new Moses was the longed-for Messiah who would literally fulfill the prophecy of Psalm 2, 4-6: “He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord has them [the kings of the earth] in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in his fury, saying, ‘I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill.’ ” 

“They were going to come and carry him off to make him king.”  The people did not ask the Lord for the meaning of the sign.  They decide on their own, priding themselves that they were able to do this.  The Lord gave them ample time for them to ask, but they do not avail themselves of the opportunity.  Instead, they decide to acclaim him as their king and march with him to Jerusalem.  The Lord does not forcibly prevent them from doing this but conceals himself and then departs secretly by way of the sea.  They do not want to be taught, for they have made up their minds, but he will let them cool down and then teach them.  And then they will reject the One who gave the sign, the only one who could explain it.

 Saturday in the 16th Week of Ordinary Time, July 27, 2024

Matthew 13, 24-30

Jesus proposed a parable to the crowds. “The Kingdom of heaven may be likened to a man who sowed good seed in his field. While everyone was asleep his enemy came and sowed weeds all through the wheat, and then went off. When the crop grew and bore fruit, the weeds appeared as well. The slaves of the householder came to him and said, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where have the weeds come from?’ He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ His slaves said to him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’ He replied, ‘No, if you pull up the weeds you might uproot the wheat along with them. Let them grow together until harvest; then at harvest time I will say to the harvesters, ‘First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles for burning; but gather the wheat into my barn.’ ”

Jesus preaches here to his disciples, who are familiar with his way of preaching and with his parables, and so are in a better position to understand him than the crowds.  He particularly preaches here regarding the kingdom of heaven, a term that does not occur in the prophets or in the apocryphal literature of the time.  It is worth noting that Jesus does not say, “the kingdom of Israel”, the re-establishing of which many Pharisees and scribes expected to be done by the Messiah.  Thus, in his healing and exorcising, the Lord acts, for the Jews, like the long-awaited Messiah, but his words do not lend to this interpretation.  

His parables on the kingdom of heaven do not contain references to uprisings, soldiers, fighting, or victories, either.  Clearly, his kingdom is “not of this world”.  Instead, the objects and occupations of ordinary daily life fill these parables, at once speaking to the common man, and at the same time showing them as signs of heavenly realities.

“The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field.”  Now, this treasure was not buried in the man’s own field, but in another’s.  It sounds like the finder happened to be in this field, perhaps on business, and found the treasure.  It sounds like the finder had a fairly easy time locating it.  He would hardly have taken to digging and excavating another man’s field without permission.  This implies that the owner of the field did not know his field very well.  He did not know what was on it.  This signifies the Gentiles, who found Christ among the Jews and “sold off” their former way of life in order to live as a Christian.  We can also understand this as a Christian man whose devotion is unremarkable suddenly realizing, in an inspiration of the Holy Spirit, how much Jesus loves him, and he completely gives himself over to the Lord.

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant searching for fine pearls.”  Now, we can understand this parable much as we understand the one above, but we can look at them in another way: It is The Son of God who is the merchant in this parable, and he is “looking for” those whom he has come down to earth  to save.  Out of joy in finding us, he sells all that he has — that is, he leaves heaven, becomes man, and endures his Passion and Death — in order to save us.  In his eyes, we are the “pearl of great price”.  As St. Paul reminds us, “You are bought with a great price” (1 Corinthians 6, 20).

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea, which collects fish of every kind.”  That is, everyone is invited into the kingdom of heaven: “Many are called” (Matthew 22, 14).  “Fish of every kind” are caught, that is, those who love Christ for himself, and those who give the appearance of following him for some benefit, such as power or money.  The net is haul ashore, the last judgment, and what is good is kept and what is bad is thrown away.  The Lord adds this explanatory phrase: “The angels will go out and separate the wicked from the righteous.”  Traditionally, it is understood that the mission of the angels on the day of judgment will be to wake the dead, reconstituting their bodies so that their souls can reunite with them.  The angels will then convey the resurrected humans to the place of judgment.  In the image our Lord furnishes here, it is the angels which will separate the “lambs” from the “goats” in the presence of the Lord.  After the judgment, the angels will take the wicked and “throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”  Perhaps the former guardian angels of the wicked will do this.  The “wailing and grinding of teeth” signifies both the agony of the wicked in their torments and of their regret at how easily they could have been saved if they had given themselves to Christ during the short time of their mortal lives.

Finally, Jesus compares the scribe instructed in the kingdom of heaven as the head of the household who brings out both the old and the new.  In the case of the head of the household, that might mean fresh food and aged wine.  In the case of the scribe, it can mean the ability to understand and preach both the Old and New Testaments, revealing how the Old is the sign of the New.  That can be any of us who love the Scriptures inspired by God and treat them as treasures and as pearls of great price.

 Friday in the 16th Week of Ordinary Time, July 26, 2024

The Feast of Saints Joachim and Anne

Matthew 13, 16-17

Jesus said to his disciples: “Blessed are your eyes, because they see, and your ears, because they hear. Amen, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.”

The Blessed Virgin Mary did not receive many instructions for what to do after she conceived the Son of God in her womb.  She was not told where her Son should be born, where or how he should be raised, or what to expect from him that would distinguish him from all the other children who had ever lived.  Similarly, the parents of the Virgin Mary would have known little of how to raise their daughter Mary, conceived without original sin in the womb of her mother Anne.  The early traditions contained in the so-called Proto-Gospel of James, probably written in the early 100’s, tell us that an angel announced to Mary’s parents, whose names are given as Joachim and Anne, that they would become the parents of a child who would be known through the whole world.  That was all.  They were left on their own as to whether the child would be a boy or a girl, where the child should be born, how raised, and in what way the child would fulfill the prophecy of the angel.  

They were simple folks, this couple.  The Proto-Gospel makes Joachim a rich man, but this seems unlikely.  More likely is that he was rich in faith, together with his wife.  They had grown old together though without the blessing of children such as all their relatives and friends had received, despite their piety.  They did not blame God for their lack of fertility but continued to practice their religion.  And when Anne learned from the Angel that she would have a child, her first thought was not to brag of this to her neighbors or to claim any credit for herself but to give the child to the service of Almighty God.

We do not hear anything more of them from tradition after Mary is married to Joseph.  Presumably they rested from their labors in the place of the dead until the Lord Jesus greeted them there after he died on the Cross and came down to lead them and the rest of the just to heaven.

The Lord’s words in the Gospel remind us of the intense yearning the just felt for the coming of their Savior: “As a hart longs for flowing streams, so longs my soul for thee, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God” (Psalm 42, 1-2).  How we who know the Lord Jesus through the Scriptures and the Sacraments and in prayer should yearn for the everlasting hills of heaven and the Lord’s tender embrace (cf. Genesis 49, 26)!

 Thursday in the 16th Week of Ordinary Time, July 25, 2024

The Feast of St. James the Greater, Apostle

Matthew 20, 20-28

The mother of the sons of Zebedee approached Jesus with her sons and did him homage, wishing to ask him for something. He said to her, “What do you wish?” She answered him, “Command that these two sons of mine sit, one at your right and the other at your left, in your Kingdom.” Jesus said in reply, “You do not know what you are asking. Can you drink the chalice that I am going to drink?” They said to him, “We can.” He replied, “My chalice you will indeed drink, but to sit at my right and at my left, this is not mine to give but is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.” When the ten heard this, they became indignant at the two brothers. But Jesus summoned them and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and the great ones make their authority over them felt. But it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave. Just so, the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

James the son of the fisherman Zebedee and his wife Salome, the older brother of John, was probably under twenty years old when the Lord Jesus called him to be an Apostle.  He had not yet married and worked alongside his father and younger brother, fishing the Sea of Galilee.  He knew Simon and Andrew, the sons of Jona, whom St. Luke describes as partners with him and his father and brother (cf. Luke 5, 7).  He was an impulsive young man who locked onto causes and pursued them with zeal.  For this reason, the Lord called him and his similarly disposed brother John “the sons of thunder”.  The Lord showed his appreciation for his faith in including him in a special sub-group of the Apostles whom he took with him when he raised the dead daughter of the leader of Capernaum’s synagogue, and when the Lord was transfigured.  Jesus also took him with when he prayed at the Garden of Gethsemane.  Fearless in preaching the Gospel, he was the first of the Apostles to be martyred, slain by the order of Herod Agrippa.  According to a later tradition, St. James preached the Gospel in Spain before returning to Judea, where he was martyred.

“The mother of the sons of Zebedee approached Jesus with her sons and did him homage, wishing to ask him for something.”  The lists of the female disciples of the Lord found in the Gospels give reason to think that Salome, the mother of James and John, was the sister of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  If this is so, it might explain her boldness in asking Jesus for high positions when he restored the Kingdom of Israel.  This would explain the harsh reaction of the other Apostles, who would have known of this relationship And who would have protested at James and John asserting familial privilege through their mother.

“Command that these two sons of mine sit, one at your right and the other at your left, in your Kingdom.”  Salome, like most of the Lord’s disciples at this time, believed that the Lord would restore the Kingdom of David, and she asks for high positions for her sons in his future government.  It is hard to see what basis she thought she had to do this and receive a favorable reply unless it is true that she was related to the Lord in some way.  The ambition for her sons, who surely prevailed on her to make this request, gives us insight into their character at this point on their young lives.  “Can you drink the chalice that I am going to drink?”  The Lord turns to the sons.  His question might be more precisely translated from the Greek as: “Can you drink the chalice that I am about to drink?”  That is, his drinking the chalice is imminent.  As they are nearing Jerusalem where he will give up his life, the Lord is asking them if they are prepared to go through everything he will go through, whatever that may be.  In the Garden of Gethsemane, the Lord would pray: “My Father, if it be possible, let this chalice pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26, 39).  Since the Lord took James and John with him close to the place where he prayed, we might wonder if the two Apostles heard him, and if they connected the chalice they were so sure they could drink with the chalice the Lord was about to drink.

“Just so, the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”  Here Jesus confronts the brothers with the true nature of the Kingdom of God, where charity rules, not power based on fear.  

The Lord’s answer to James and John reminds us that God’s ways are not our ways (cf. Isaiah 55, 8), and that his Kingdom is truly not of this world (cf. John 18, 36).

 Wednesday in the 16th Week of Ordinary Time, July 24, 2024

Matthew 13, 1-9

On that day, Jesus went out of the house and sat down by the sea. Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat down, and the whole crowd stood along the shore. And he spoke to them at length in parables, saying: “A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky ground, where it had little soil. It sprang up at once because the soil was not deep, and when the sun rose it was scorched, and it withered for lack of roots. Some seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it. But some seed fell on rich soil, and produced fruit, a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold. Whoever has ears ought to hear.”

“On that day, Jesus went out of the house and sat down by the sea.”  The Gospel Reading for today’s Mass takes up where the Gospel Reading for yesterday’s Mass left off.  The Lord taught in the house, which was filled with people (meaning also the courtyard around the house and beyond), and now he goes out to the shore to teach in order to accommodate the crowd which continued growing.  “Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat down, and the whole crowd stood along the shore.”  This is Peter’s fishing boat.  The Lord resorted to it because the crowd was pressing upon him.  The boat provided for his safety and allowed him room to speak to the multitude.

The Evangelists often remark on the size of the crowds Jesus attracted, especially in Galilee.  The fact seems to amaze them even after a number of years.  Here was an unlearned carpenter from a nondescript town, dressed in ordinary clothes, teaching about the Law of God and doing so despite his rejection by the Pharisees and the hostility of the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem.  His enemies also note the crowds, and fear to take action against him because of them (cf. Matthew 21, 46).  The crowds indicate the desire of the Jews of the time to hear about God and to see a wonder-worker.  They do not necessarily represent those who truly believe in Jesus.  

The Lord, in his parable, is speaking about the crowds and about those among them who believe.  The Lord tells us that the entire field is covered with seed.  There is no spot that is not saturated with it: the good soil, the thorny soil, the rocky soil, even the path receives seed.  As the Lord explains subsequently, the field is the world and the seed is the word of God — that is, the preaching of the Gospel, and also faith and grace.  The crowd before him is the field, Jesus also says to the multitude before them, and they are at that time being seeded.  What sort of “soil” each person in the crowd is will show itself in whether the person repents, believes, and perseveres. 

From the Lord’s own words, rebuking the cities of Galilee, including Capernaum, where he performed so many miracles, we know that not many people took his words to heart and repented.  Like Herod to John the Baptist, they liked to listen, but they did not act on what they heard (cf. Mark 6, 20).  Probably many things he taught them puzzled them, or they could not reconcile what he taught with what the Pharisees taught.  At any rate, they did not often ask him to explain what he taught.  They looked, the listened, they marveled, and then they moved on.

How merciful and patient the Lord shows himself in persisting in casting the seed of the Gospel in every part of the field of the world, however likely it may seem to the eye to be fertile soil!  And he does this continually.  In Capernaum and in the other towns and cities of Galilee and Judea he did this on his own for three years, and then since his Ascension into heaven through his Apostles and then their disciples.  We pray that we may look, listen, marvel, and be strengthened in our faith so that we may please our Lord.