Today’s Gospel contains the parable of the Sower and describes the seeds falling to the ground and being devoured, choked, and scorched. I wrote on this same Gospel last year, here.
For today, I want to concentrate on the explanation that Christ gives to His Apostles after the people depart. Our Lord frequently pulls His Apostles aside to explain certain parables or miracles as He prepares them for their mission to the world. In this case, Christ explains:
“The mystery of the Kingdom of God has been granted to you. But to those outside everything comes in parables, so that [the scripture might be fulfilled]
they may look and see but not perceive,
and hear and listen but not understand,
in order that they may not be converted and be forgiven.”1
The sense of the passage here is not that God is necessarily hardening the hearts of the people who are listening but that the message that Christ gives either falls on a willing and docile heart or a closed-off and hardened heart. These are the two options. Our Lord famously does not allow for a middle ground. We are either for Him or against Him.2 The same is true of His message offered to mankind which comes with an invitation into His church and the divine life it grants. This invitation is either accepted or it is rejected. We have eyes to perceive and ears to hear but we have the free will to look away and ignore the call of Christ.
God desires the salvation of all and gives to all the sufficient grace needed to attain heaven. But many will ‘look and see but not perceive or ‘hear and listen but not understand.’ And because they neither perceive nor understand, they will not be converted or forgiven. This is the tragedy of those who choose to live and die contrary to God.
God does not force us into heaven against our will. While He desires our salvation and that intimate relationship with us, our consent is absolutely necessary. He has sent His Word among us for our salvation. Will we see Him? Will we hear Him? Will we be continually converted and seek forgiveness from a God who desires to give mercy?
This is a paraphrasing of Isaiah 6:9-10. I have placed in brackets ‘the scripture might be fulfilled’ as this is the common interpretation of the sense of the passage since Our Lord is quoting from the Prophet.
Cf. Matthew 12:30.