Your Soul Cannot Remain the Same Year after Year
In the Parable of the Sower found in Luke 8.5-15, our Lord reveals to us the condition of our souls. Our soul is either hard, filled with the weeds of temptation, blocked by the rocks of struggle, or rich fertile soil. Year after year, God, just like the dedicated farmer scatters seed, sends out the Word of God to every soul no matter what condition. If our soul is prepared to receive the Word, our faith bears fruit; if not, our faith withers away.
The work of every farmer, and therefore the work of each Christian, is to continually work the soil either to improve poor soil, or maintain rich fertile soil. Glance at any vacant lot in town and even the richest soil eventually fills with weeds and rocks eventually hardening to the point of being an eyesore. Our soul is no different. We must either work to improve our soul or maintain a healthy Godly soul. If we leave our soul “just the way it is” it becomes just another vacant lot showing the lack of attention.
Year after year we hear the same Gospel story read to us in Church, and year after year our souls are not in the same condition it was the year or years before. If you want your soul to become more fertile and filled with fewer weeds, it takes work. The more your work your soul, the better the soil becomes and the more fruit your faith with produce when your soul receives the seed and you hear the Word of God. But if you depend on what you learned last year or when you were in Sunday School as a child so many years ago, don’t be surprised when the Word of God doesn’t grow into fruit in your soul. Don’t let your soul become an abandoned lot, embrace the life of Orthodoxy and your soul will become more fertile each year and your faith will bear more fruit. No matter what you choose, your soul cannot remain the same. It’s up to you.
The question is, how do we work our soul to prepare it to bear fruit for Christ? The life of the Church are the tools we have been given by Christ and His Church, guided by the Holy Spirit and blessed by the Father. Just as a farmer enters his barn to select the tools to work the soil, we enter the Church through baptism to select our tools, prayer-fasting-almsgiving, to work our soul to prepare it to hear the Word of God, nurture and care for the Word of God in our hearts, and eventually bear great fruit for the glory of God. If not, our heart will grow dry and hard, and the Word of God will be taken away from us.
