This is second step on the porch of Lent . Lent is the Porch, Heaven is the House.
The Gospel is from Luke, the story of the sower of the seed. There are a few things to remember about this passage. The Sower is Jesus. The seed is His Word.
The Word has gone out to the ends of the earth. He has cast the seed everywhere. He is a God of extravagant generosity, unreasonable generosity. The test is the kind of ground it falls on.
What kind of ground are you?
Here are a few meditations from the Fathers:
“Man casts seed to the ground, when he places a good intention in his heart; and he sleeps, when he already rests in the hope which attends on a good work. But he rises night and day because he advances amidst prosperity and adversity, though he knows it not for he is as yet unable to measure his increase, and yet virtue, once conceived, goes on increasing. “
St. Gregory
“At first a simple thought about evil makes it into the mind, and if it is kept in the mind, then a passionate motion arises from it, and if you do not extirpate the passion, then it inclines the mind to agreement, and when this happens, it leads the mind to the commission of a sinful deed. Guard your thoughts, for if you do not sin in thought, you will never sin in deed.”
St. Maximos the Confessor