Here is an image, he said, of the kingdom of heaven. There was a man who sowed his field with clean seed. . . . (Matthew xiii. 24)
The countryman is not impatient because the season of flowers and fruit is swiftly over and the winter is so long. He comes in early from his fields, to doze content while firelight weaves the long dusk with gold. He is as conscious of life in winter, when the crust of the earth is iron and not a leaf is on the hedges, as he is when the fields are green and the bough is white.
He has lived through cruel winters and heard old wives moaning full of foreboding for the spring; he has seen frost and flood and driving wind alternating through the dark months; but he knows that with spring the snowdrop comes again, and the pale drift of crocus and the delicate green blade of his early wheat.
He knows that the life sleeping in the earth is stronger than anything that can assail it, that the life that is in all living is stronger than death. That is the knowledge which is the root of his peace.
The mystery of the seed is his. It is one, but multiple; dry, but contains the water of life; little, but fills the earth. Black, but is white bread. It is within the ripe ear of wheat, and the ripe ear of wheat is within it. Scattered on the wind, it is not lost, but carries life wherever the wind blows.
It sows the meadows and the woods. It sows the cleft in the rock. It sows the roadside and the ditch. It sows the dust-heaps in the cities. Buried, it springs from the grave, a green herb of life. It is the symbol of Christ and the Kingdom of Heaven.
While the seed sleeps it grows. The season of the sleeping seed is the season of man's rest. Rest is the condition of natural growth, equally it is the condition of supernatural life.
If Christ is to come to flower and bear fruit in individual lives, there must be seasons of rest in which there is almost no activity but the giving wholly of self to nourish the supernatural life; just as the earth in which the seed is buried is given to nourish the bread. But, and this is even more important, there must be a permanent state of inward rest, founded in the peace of mind which comes from complete trust.
A state of mind inducing such rest becomes habitual if we fold our thoughts upon the knowledge that in us is the seed of Christ-life; if we fold our whole being round this fact, as the earth is round the seed, our minds will be at rest.
“Here is an image, he said, of the kingdom of heaven. There was a man who sowed his field with clean seed. . . .”
God is the Divine Sower—the world is His field. He sowed it in the beginning with all our necessities. Bread, fruit, water, wine, linen, silk and wool; resin, crystal, gold and oil, salt and fire and light.
Before sin had brought pain into the world, God had hidden remedies for pain in it. Men would discover the gifts of the Divine Healer and call them by names as melodious as the names of the nine choirs of angels, camomile, hellebore, heartsease, thyme, verbena, lavender, dwale. Most wonderful of all there was bread. God rejoiced in the world that He had made: “And God saw all the things that he had made, and they were very good. . . .” The Creator had stored the world for man, and to man himself He had given a mind and a will that would enable him to respond to His love, but God's joy at the dawn of His creation was in more than this.
In His field He had one little plot apart, lying under snow where no foot had ever trodden, silent with the silence of snow, that no voice had ever broken. In it He sowed Living Bread.
This little plot was Our Lady. In her was sown the seed of Christ.
The good seed which God had sown was the seed of His Son's life.
When the newly created water still trembled in the breath of the Spirit, and the seed was still hidden and all the wheat hidden in it, God saw His harvests. He saw the fields of ripe corn that would be irrigated by the Water of life, the bound stooks, the grain sifted and gathered into His barns. He saw the green wheat springing up everywhere, from the most unlikely places on earth; not only from remote villages and hamlets, where no one would trample on it, but from the thickly populated cities, forcing its way up between the paving stones. Trampled, but lifting itself up when the Sun, that was His own love, shone upon it. In the narrow streets of swarming slums, in the yards of tenements and prisons, from the ruins of men's homes destroyed by men. Whenever the world grew old, the green fields renewed it, whenever it grew drab, the burnished harvests were its splendour.
What is this wheat with which God has sown His field? Christ answered that question plainly, it is Himself. It is the Christ-life given to those who will take it; Christ is the bread that gives life to the world. Here are His own words: “It is I who am the bread of life.” (John vi. 35.)
“God's gift of bread comes down from heaven and gives life to the whole world. . . . I myself am the living bread that has come down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he shall live for ever. And now, what is this bread which I am to give? It is my flesh, given for the life of the world.” (John vi. 33, 51-52.)
Taken from a chapter in The Passion of the Infant Christ by Caryll Houselander. Available now from Angelico Press.
1 comment
This is beautiful. Captivating me with earthly images, familiar and right. And to think it is all in God’s plan, has always and will always be. Sometimes I gain joy from knowing that He is holding me in the hallow of His hand.