The name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy spirit. Amen. The keyword possibly in this parable, which is I say not an easy one to straighten out. If it can be straightened out, is that the good seed or the good sower, whoever or whatever it is, is the one who hears the word of God, and as this translation says, takes it in. Takes it in.
Now, we all know whatever word you use there's a big difference between hearing something and taking it in. Many a time I've heard a little child who's been telling his parents something about something very important. And then he asked some question or something, which shows that the parent wasn't wasn't taking it in at all. And the kid will say, Well, you're not listening. This is a problem.
This is a grievous problem. It's so easy to live on a very superficial level. Now, when you say superficial, I mean in the sense of surface. There's nothing wrong with the surface. If you're swimming, the idea is to stay on the surface.
So, when we say superficial, that's not condemning something because it's on the surface. Phenomena are on the surface. That doesn't mean we reject them. But, where the trouble comes is understanding that under phenomena, there are maybe other realities. That the surface of things don't always tell us what the reality of the things are.
Appearances, just a commonplace thing, appearances are very deceiving. No. It's not the appearances are deceiving, it's our bad judgments. By bad, I mean erroneous judgments. Things are what they are.
Surface realities are what they are. Phenomena are what they are. There's nothing artificial or deceiving about phenomena. If you go to the theater, and for the backdrops on the stage, you see mountains and you see various things. And when the lights come on in the theater, at the intermission, there's nothing up there.
It was all done by shadows of lights. And you say, gee, that's deceptive. No, the deception is in your bad judgments, your erroneous judgments. There's no deception in reality. What was out there is just what was out there.
And when you said, why that's the painting on the wall out there, and it turns out to be nothing but shadows cast by some special kinds of lighting. Well, who's made the mistake? Not the not the stuff on the wall. You made the mistake. In a certain sense, you know, there's nothing artificial.
Everything is what it is. But, you see, it's so easy, however, to move only on this surface level. It's so easy to do that. It's so easy to practice religious actions, religious words, religious gestures, and be totally non religious, non religious. Totally.
It's possible. It's very possible. For example, Jung, the so called great psychologist, or psychiatrist, or whatever he was, The follower of Freud who broke with Freud. One of the finest things I've ever read on the blessed sacrament was written by Jung. I've used it.
I've quoted it from this pulpit. Yet, Jung didn't have He didn't believe in the least in the blessed sacrament or the real presence. Not in the least. When it comes to being a disaster, and being an enemy of theism, Jung is much worse than Freud. Much worse, as Robert Cole has pointed out.
Freud at least said, I'm a good honest to God atheist. Whereas Jung, he praises religion. He praises the blessed sacrament. As I said, one of the most eloquent things I've ever read. He wrote.
Or at least he delivered it as a lecture, I think it was in London. And yet, he had no He didn't have any conception of any real prejudice. As I say, he didn't believe in God. So, you see, it's very You can go through all the motions, and that's especially true of Catholicism folks. Because we are an old religion.
We didn't start yesterday. And Catholicism, the church of Jesus Christ uses everything. Everything. It can easily quote with Horace, nothing which is human do I reject. I do not think anything that is human is foreign to me.
And that's been the church's attitude down the centuries. It's brought into the church symbols of all sorts. Color, statues, pictures, music, gestures, liturgy, vestments. All of these things, the Catholic church has used and used profusely, and sometimes disastrously. Not that the things were wrong, but that they went wild.
You take the sixteenth century and Luther's rebellion against what his so called indulgences. It was What he was rebelling against is precisely what you would rebel against today. Precisely. That you can buy your way into heaven. You Would you accept that idea?
And yet, that was very commonplace. I don't It wasn't commonplace with the intelligentsia. It wasn't the teaching of the Catholic church. But that's the way a lot of people in the pews thought. So, remember, as Aristotle said, the destruction of the best is the worst.
The destruction of the best is the worst. And so, all of these symbols, all of these instrumentalities, all of these tools that we use, and rightly use, to make us more religious, to bring us closer to God. All of these things, if they're not used properly, can separate us from God. Remember, when you're dealing with a symbol, the whole Not the whole, but the main- the main main thing about a symbol is the thing it symbolizes. Now, you can make your symbol of gold and platinum.
You can enshrine that symbol with all kinds of precious stones. And so, you can so concentrate on the symbol that you forget what it symbolizes. The thing it stands for. You can put a flag up and get so engrossed in making a perfect flag of the most of perfect materials, of perfect color, that you forget that the flag is a symbol of a nation. And this is so true of religion.
So, what our Lord is saying here: It's not enough to hear. It's not enough just to listen in the sense in which we get it. But we've got to take it in. It's got to be real. It's got to be real.
When you come into a church, Catholic church where the blessed sacraments are, and you bend your knee in genoclexion, what does it mean that you're bending a knee? When you make the sign of the cross, what does it mean? Is it just something you flip through and that's that? What does it mean? Are you listening?
Have you taken it in? Or can God say to you as a little kid to his mother or father, daddy, you're not listening. So, however you construe this parable of our blessed Lord and the sower, and the seed, as I say that the things get mixed up. What perfectly Some of it's perfectly clear. I mean, you can easily take out some meaning.
And that is the word of God, the good news, is the whole idea of Christ coming and of God becoming man and establishing a church. Just think in a quiet moment of what that means. That the unspeakable, the undefinable, the indescribable being we call God, I don't care what word you call him, give him, that's just a sign or a symbol. There's nothing sacrosanct about the word God. The Romans called him Deus, the Greeks called him Deus, and somebody can say, I call him the great unknown.
That's probably the best word. That this being became man in the womb of a virgin. Gosh, think of that for a second. It's tremendous. And that this being moved and had a existence in this life for only thirty three years.
Or less, maybe. Founded an institution which has endured. That's one thing you can say for sure, it has endured. It's here. It's very visibly here in the twentieth century in Garrard Park, which wasn't exactly a metropolis in the time of Jesus Christ.
What do we make of all of this? Are we lost on the surface? Are we the rock on which the sea falls? And it quickly dries up. Oh, it's accepted.
Or the shallow soil. You'll get quick results from the shallow soil. And notice, our Lord also brings in the fact that in many places the seed is accepted, but then it's crushed. We lose ourselves in all of the world around us. Some of that's inevitable.
So, we come to the last thing. Are you listening? The word of God comes. Are you taking it in? The name of the father, the son, and holy spirit.
Amen.