Father Randy Koenigsknecht
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Many people are willing to experience Jesus, but far fewer are willing to truly follow Him. This Sunday’s homily explores the Parable of the Sower, challenging us to move beyond good intentions and become disciples who continually surrender more of their lives to Christ.
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So I’ve got a bit of a polling data question, how many of you guys have been watching the World Cup? Raise your hand if you watched some of the games. Wow, this is the one mass that may come close to rivaling the 415 crowd, which I never would have expected that they’d be the winners on this. Even beating out the time, I’m not sure what I’m going to do with this data, but maybe FIFA will pay me for it or something, I don’t know what demographics we need to be reaching.
But the World Cup, so Father Chaz and I, we’ve been following somewhat casually, you know, who made it to the next stage, who won, you know, Monday, we watched the US team get their beat down, you know, from Belgium, you know, and we’re casual soccer fans, I think that’s fair to say, very casual. You know, so I wanted that game and, you know, I was entertained by it, you know, it sucked that they lost, but, you know, I had a fun enough time watching it with, you know, Father Chaz and other priests and it was a good fraternity event. Five minutes after the game, I was over the loss.
It had no real effect on me, you know, I was ready to go back to normal life. The crowd and the gospel that’s following Jesus, they’re basically the equivalent of the casual sports fans. They’re looking for an experience, they want to get something from the Lord, you know, they don’t really want to be changed though, so they want the experience of Jesus, we want to see you, like, heal someone, do something really cool, you know, Jesus, feed us with bread, multiply bread again for us, that was awesome you did that.
Jesus, say something wise. You know, they’re looking for an experience, but in the end, they’re going to go home, they’re going to leave, and they’ll just go back to the normal lives, they will be unchanged by it. They’ll go back to the normal work, go back to their families, the regular sports, you know, and their lives will be much the same.
But the disciples are different, they’re set apart, because instead of leaving and just going back, the disciples, they keep following Jesus, and it doesn’t just say the apostles did it, it’s disciples, because the disciple is one who is willing to go to him, who is willing to hear his words and wrestle with them. And they go to Jesus, they ask, like, what does this mean? Why are you speaking in parables? Why are you doing this? They’re wrestling with his words, they’re seeking him, there actually is a degree of commitment there, they want to understand, they want to be changed. The crowd doesn’t have that.
Some of them, they’re like those who are hardened, like the path. There is no room for growth, there’s no room for any seeds to get in. Even if it’s thrown out there, it’s just going to die.
Those are the people that we need to pray for. Lord, create a way, create just a small opening where we can begin to bring life, where we can begin to just crack open that soil, so it can absorb the moistures, it can become fertile. But much of the crowd, I suspect, is one of two places, either in the rocky ground or the place of the thorny ground, and I suspect that’s where many of us are too.
Those who are like on the rocky ground, it’s got little soil, it springs up right away. This is the people who, you hear the words of the gospel, you hear what Jesus is saying, and you’re like, I want that, that sounds so good, I want to go for it, alright, I’m going to start coming to Mass more often, alright, I know I need to pray more, so I’m going to commit to doing that, whatever that looks like, I want to do it. You know, and they have the best of intentions, but somehow intentions never actually make it into action when it comes down to it.
When push comes to shove, they fall away, well, there’s a family event today, so we’ll go to Mass next week. You know, there’s a sports game on, the World Cup is on, I’ll pray later in the day, you know, and then later becomes never, and so on and so on. They have the best of intentions, they want it, but faith without works dies.
It fades away, because enthusiasm will just go away without relationship, to actually bind it together, to give it life. And the beautiful thing is, when we actually have that faith and when we express it by our works and actually start living it out, faith is deepened. Because by faith, I know that God is real, I know that he wants to work in my life and by my works, as I do that, as I start living that out, as I start following him, coming to Mass, praying more, you know, praying with other people, living the Christian life, I begin to see his hand, I begin to see his power at work in my life, and it deepens my faith, it draws me deeper, it’s a great cycle.
It’s not just faith without works is dead, faith with works is alive, and they mutually grow each other. Then a number of people are like the thorny ground, it’s ground that is actually fruitful, they’re growing, you look at them and it’s green, it’s bright, it’s vibrant, they’ve committed some degree of their life to the Lord and they’re going with him, they’re growing, but what happens? You know, if we’re willing to give like 10% of our life to the Lord, like, okay, Lord, I’ve been convicted, I’m committed, I’m going to start, you know, coming to Mass, praying, doing things, X, Y, and Z, whatever it is, that’s amazing, that’s beautiful. Like God receives you in that place and he’s so excited that you want to be with him that you want to start growing, but you’re not going to stay there.
If you’ve given him 10%, he’s going to come back and he’s going to ask for 11 next. At some point, there’s going to be more that he asks of you, there’s more that he wants you to give. And when we stop giving, we begin to regress.
Because as fertile as that ground is, that also means weeds are growing up around us, and if we get stuck at a certain point, the weeds are going to keep growing, and eventually they’re going to tear it down, they’re going to tangle it down. You know, and what does Jesus say in the Gospel? He says, you know, to the one who has, more will be given to the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. It sounds really harsh.
It’s actually the natural flow of things we recognize in our life. In my life, it’s with my Spanish ability. You know, since being at St. John’s, it has regressed mightily.
I have not been practicing. I’m not doing what I’m supposed to do, I need to practice that, so I need to be held accountable. But, you know, if I had been practicing, not only would it have not stayed at the same level, it would have actually been growing, slowly, but still growing.
But because I’m not, I wasn’t doing anything, got to change that, it falls back. It’s the same with the Lord. If we’re not working, if we’re not giving him more as he’s asking for more of our life, as he reveals more and more of it, we’re slowly going to start fading.
You know, not because we want to, but just because that is how human beings work. That is how we function quite often, but that’s not the way that it has to be. You know, I look at those, the people of the thorny ground, it just breaks your heart because they’re so close.
Oh, they’re doing the right things, they got it. They just need to keep taking a few more steps. Some of them, they’re bearing fruit, like, one-fold, two-fold.
They’re not hitting the 30, the 50, the 100-fold yet. But if they keep going, that’s what’s possible for them. The disciple who’s fully committed, who’s given himself over and who consistently gives more, what he discovers is that he’s not going to eventually, like, reach full maturity and he’s like, wow, I’ve done it and that’s it.
What he discovers is that there’s more. He discovers that he starts bearing fruit in his life, personal fruit, joy, peace, greater purpose, kindness, gentleness, those fruits of the Spirit, all of those things, they begin to rise up in him. We often see this.
You think of, like, a lot of people have that, like, that great-grandma who’s like, oh man, she’s always in church and she always prayed and, like, I want to be like her. It’s the fruits of the Spirit being driven, like, coming alive in her, bearing fruit. But it also goes out to other people.
This is where service comes in, where it’s not just something that I do because I feel like I have to, but something I do because I love this other person. We begin to be forgiving, we draw other people together, we unite people. The works of Jesus come alive within us, we start doing the things that he did.
Just this past, during this past week, I heard testimony from a couple parents. They had their daughter, she was, you know, a young girl, like nine or ten. She’d been diagnosed with scoliosis.
They showed us the X-ray of her spine. She had an S-curve, you know, in it. It was about 16 degrees at that point, you know, and it had been getting worse.
And so, in faith, they’re like, all right, Lord, we know that you can work in power, that you can do amazing things. They took her to a prayer team, just regular folks, wasn’t a priest, wasn’t anyone special. And they prayed for their daughter, and they prayed over her that she would be healed.
And the next little fly they were, you know, showing us in a video, the next thing they showed us was the new X-ray of her back fully straightened. No more scoliosis. That doesn’t just happen.
It’s the power of God at work, and when we commit, when we give ourselves to him, we become conduits for that to work. We truly become his hands. He loves to work through us, to do those things.
And it’s amazing what is possible for us. When I look back on my life just nine years ago, when I entered seminary right out of high school, you know, I was a happy kid. I had some joy in me, you know, like, and I thought I knew kind of what was up.
I had a decent relationship with the Lord, and I had no idea. Like, I thought I was doing pretty well. And then suddenly, I’m discovering, like, my ceiling is, like, here.
This is what I think, like, the pinnacle of life is like, and I’m, like, here. I’m working my way up to it. And suddenly, I discover, like, oh, the ceiling is, like, here.
Like, there is so much more that I thought I could have. And I look back at myself. I was, like, I can’t believe I thought that that was, like, the pinnacle of happiness, of, like, joy of life because of how much I’ve discovered, how much I’ve found.
I even looked just back this past year. When I was a priest, I was, like, all right, Lord, I feel like I’ve given you, like, 90%. You know, most of my life has given over.
We’re progressing well. Like, we’re getting close to that ceiling again. And what do I discover? It’s over the course of one year.
Man, Lord, I feel like I’m at 50% now. Like, the ceiling is, like, way up here. There is way more that is possible than I ever thought.
And I keep discovering that over and over again. I keep hearing from other people that I talk to who are also enthusiastic, who love the Lord, who are diving in. We just have no idea what we don’t know, how much we don’t know, how much more there is for us that we can lean into, that we can call on the Lord, that He can give us.
There is truly a fullness of life that is possible. And He can work powerfully through us. He can do amazing things.
We just have to be willing to just give Him that next step. Just one more piece, Lord.
(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)