Let’s be the good ground for God’s word

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

IN that parable of the sower and the seed, (cfr. Mt 13,8-23) it’s made quite clear that we are encouraged to be the good ground for God’s word which actually represents his great love for us and our salvation. We should avoid being the wayside, the rocky ground, and the thorns where the seed of God’s word and love was sown and would just be wasted.

As good ground, we are meant to respond properly to God’s tremendous love for us, a response that will surely be fruitful not only for us but also for everybody else. It’s the fruitfulness that would win us the status and dignity of being true children of God, his image and likeness, sharers of his divine life and nature.

How should we respond to God’s love for us? Christ himself spelled it out to us clearly. When asked what the greatest commandment was, what God wanted most from us, he said: “You shall love your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” (Mt 22,37)

This is God’s most important desire for us and that’s because we are supposed to love him the way he loves us. And his love, as we can see clearly, nothing less than a madness of love.

Imagine what he had to do to recover us to him despite the fact that he would lose nothing if we choose to cut ourselves from him through our sinful ways. He had to become man, he had to do a lot of things for us, and ultimately, he had to offer his life on the cross, bearing all our sins and conquering them with his resurrection. Indeed, his love is given without measure and without conditions.

We need to meditate and savor on the many details of God’s abiding love for us that goes all the way. We need to feel that love as continuously as possible because that is the only way we too can be moved to love him and love others in return. We should try our best to have our love for him and others measure up to his love for us.

We should be eager to fill up what is still lacking in our love for God and for others. Thus, we should try our best to have a sporting spirit in this business of learning how to love the way God loves us. We should try our best, and in our successes and failures in this business, we should just move on, never giving up.

When we know and feel God’s tremendous love for us, we for sure would be moved to be very generous and gratuitous in our love also. We would be willing to wage a continuing struggle in growing in our love, making it more theological and supernatural, relying more on God’s grace than our mere efforts.

We should never give up in our pursuit to love God the way God loves us. It will be an endless affair that would convince that there will never be a moment when we can think that we have loved enough.

It is a love that is willing to take on anything, no matter how unfair things may appear to us, humanly speaking, as when like Christ we manage to love even our enemies and to offer our life for those who may have offended us!

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com