Father Randy Koenigsknecht
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Father Randy Koenigsknecht reflects on Jesus’ Parable of the Sower, challenging us to examine what kind of soil our hearts have become. It’s not enough to simply hear the Gospel or be inspired for a moment. Faith grows deeper when we put it into action through prayer, worship, service, and daily discipleship.
As we continue giving more of our lives to Christ, He produces lasting spiritual fruit—not only within us, but through us for the good of others. The invitation is simple: take the next step and trust the Lord with a little more of your heart.
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The crowd in the gospel that’s following Jesus, they’re basically the equivalent of the casual sports fans. They want to get something from the Lord, but in the end, they’re going to go home. They’re going to leave, and they’ll just go back to their normal lives.
They will be unchanged by it. But the disciples are different, because instead of leaving and just going back, the disciples, they keep following Jesus. There actually is a degree of commitment there.
They want to understand. 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 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. But faith without works dies. It fades away.
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 now, as I start following him, coming to mass, praying more, 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’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? 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 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. 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.
But that’s not the way that it has to be. 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. 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.
But it also goes out to other people, 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.
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.
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. There is truly a fullness of life that is possible, and he can work powerfully through us. He can do amazing things, but we just have to be willing to just give him that next step.
Just one more piece, Lord. And so we’re going to make that prayer of asking him to help us to do that, and it’s up to you to take the next step.
(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)