The Seed

In a movie I saw years ago (it was so many years ago that I have already for­got­ten its title), I remem­ber a scene where the main char­ac­ter showed his son a seed and told the boy – “All the secrets in the world are found in this one seed.”

I was reflect­ing on that the other day and I real­ized that that must be so, because the seed doesn’t look any­thing like the tree it is going to be – but the tree is already there–in some strange and weird way–in the seed.

And isn’t that the mys­tery of life? That big things come in small pack­ages. That who you will be is already there now in who you are? That deci­sions you make—now—will have reper­cus­sions later on in your life.

The secret of life is also found in the seed because the seed will never become what it is – never actu­al­ize its poten­tial – unless it stops being a seed. Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat. Kung hindi mamatay sa sar­ili, mama­matay talaga. If the seed will not die to self, it will rot.

And isn’t that another mys­tery of life? That death, in some weird way, leads to life? That process, wait­ing, patience, are all dif­fer­ent names of this thing called death? Process, wait­ing, patience is dying to self. A dying that may be full of sor­row, pain, suf­fer­ing. But also res­ur­rec­tion. Because we can move on, after we are hurt.

There was this famous anec­dote about Teresa de Avila. She was sup­posed to be rid­ing a horse, and then, all of a sud­den, some­thing (light­ning per­haps) struck and she was thrown off her horse. She stood up, very angry, looked up at heaven and cried, “Did you do that?” and God was sup­posed to have answered: “Yes. That is the way I treat my friends.” And Teresa cried, “No won­der you have so few.” We serve a cru­ci­fied Lord. We can­not avoid cru­ci­fix­ion. But we also serve a risen Lord. And so we wait for resurrection.

Padre Hora­cio dela Costa, the first Fil­ipino Jesuit Provin­cial of the Soci­ety in the philip­pines, once said that the Word of God has also been com­pared to a seed. In that gospel pas­sage about the sower. The Sower sows the Word of God into the soil – some fell on foot­paths, on rocky ground, where there were too much weed: but also on good soil.

He says that when the Lord was com­par­ing the Word of God to a seed, he was telling us that it is power.

It is power. Some would say, for exam­ple, that Christ was a mere philoso­pher (a great philoso­pher, but just a philoso­pher. Didn’t Gau­tama Bud­dha also talk about uni­ver­sal broth­er­hood? Didn’t Con­fu­cius also teach the Golden Rule? Didn’t Plato or Socrates, for exam­ple, talk about jus­tice, and love? So that on the one hand, Christ didn’t really say any­thing new.

And yet Jesus is not just a philoso­pher. Because the words of men (like Con­fu­cius, Plato, Socrates, etc.) are just that – words. But the word of Jesus is the word of God. And the word of God is seed.

It is true that great men like Con­fu­cius or Ghandi or Mar­tin Luther King have said many fine things. But that is all they are – fine say­ings. Words that tell us what to do, but do not give us the power to do it. No armies of mar­tyrs have been found to suf­fer tor­ture and death for the words of Con­fu­cius. But the words of Christ have given rise to count­less mar­tyrs: Roman maid­ens in the cat­a­combs, Chi­nese peas­ants, Japan­ese noble­men, Fil­ipino cat­e­chists like Lorenzo Ruiz and Pedro Calungsod.

That is because the words of Christ com­mand, but also enable. They demand great things from us, but they also give greater grace to ful­fill them. They make of us what we are not capa­ble of by our­selves. The words of Christ is seed.

There is mys­tery in that. That this seed trans­forms life­less soil (us); and changes the soil into itself. Takes all there is in the soil, and like magic, with some strange alchemy, life­less soil becomes tree. That is what the word of God does to those who receive it. It takes us, by the hand, through the heart, and we change.

And if we think about it, we don’t usu­ally notice the change. We don’t notice and we are amazed at how doubt turns to pas­sive accep­tance of events which turns to ques­tion­ing faith, which turns to trust in the slow work of God which turns to hope which turns to love. Like a seed grow­ing into a tree–watered by the rain, bathed by the sun, that seems to grow at night when we’re all asleep. We do not notice it, but

But the Word of God is seed. Your expe­ri­ence is seed. It demands, but enables. It inspires, but empow­ers. It evokes, and strengthens.