Start here with this weekend’s readings.
Jesus Christ is the Divine Sower who scatters the seeds of His grace into our lives in so many different and abundant ways. He gives us His Word in Sacred Scripture. He gives us His very Body and Blood in the Holy Eucharist. He gives us the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. And every day He fills our lives with countless blessings, both great and small.
The question for us is not whether God is sowing enough good seed. The question is whether our hearts are good soil to receive it all and to bear good fruit. How do we become good soil? And how do we remain good soil?
In one sense, this is what the whole life of the Church is about. Actively practicing all aspects of our Catholic faith—prayer, Scripture, sacraments, penance, charitable works, all of it—tills the soil of our souls and transforms us. I believe, however, that the most fundamental of all of these is silent prayer.
The French philosopher Blaise Pascal once wrote, “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” In the year 2015, researchers at the University of Virginia conducted a fascinating experiment, essentially testing Pascal’s observation. Participants were asked to sit alone in a room for several minutes with nothing to do. They could either sit there still and quiet or press a button that would give them an electric shock. Astonishingly, about two-thirds of the men and one-fourth of the women chose to shock themselves rather than simply sit still in silence.
Why would they do that? It reveals something that we all experience. When we become quiet and still, we have to face ourselves. When we turn off the outer noise, we discover that we have a lot of interior noise, too. When you sit in prolonged silence, what rises to the surface for you? Anxieties? Fears? Loneliness? Shame? Old wounds? Regrets? The list could go on for each of us. That is why silence feels threatening. We prefer distraction, even when it is self-destructive or when it is destructive toward other people. Psalm 14:4 is our indictment: “They eat up my people as though they were eating bread; they never pray to God.”
The place of uncomfortable stillness is precisely where God wants to meet us so that He can labor in the field of our hearts. The soil in a field must be tilled and softened before it can receive the seed. The same is true of our hearts. In the silence and stillness of prayer, the Lord gently brings to the surface the places that need His healing, pruning, consolation, and conversion. This kind of interior work that the Lord does when we are still and silent can be uncomfortable, but it is necessary for our own good and for the good of the people around us.
We all need time of prayer in stillness and silence every day—not just the priests and nuns, everyone. Make a plan for this in your daily schedule. Spouses, help each other with this, making sure that each one of you has time for sacred solitude with the Lord. When you enter into this kind of prayer, don’t feel the need to fill every moment with words or devotional prayers. Simply be still before Him and let Him till the soil of your heart. Allow Him to soften what has become hard, deepen what has remained shallow, and prepare you to receive the seeds of His grace.
In this Mass, Jesus the Divine Sower once again places the greatest of all seeds into our hearts: His very Body and Blood in the Holy Eucharist. May He make our hearts rich soil, so that the grace we receive today may take deep root and bear abundant fruit.
Total Surrender 
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