How do the birds reveal a brutal war for the soul in the Parable of the Sower?
That tiredness or distraction in prayer isn't always a natural phenomenon.
That tiredness or distraction in prayer isn't always a natural phenomenon.
Editor’s Notes
Our Lord told the Parable of the Sower, read on Sexagesima Sunday, early in His public ministry, as He began to teach in parables more frequently. It is the first recorded parable in the Gospels.
It follows growing opposition from the Pharisees and the rejection of His teachings by many, prompting His shift to parabolic instruction.
Shortly after, He explained the meaning of this and other parables to His disciples, emphasising the mysteries of the Kingdom of God. He also explained that he was using this manner of teaching both to reveal truths to those who are disposed to receive them and to conceal them from the hardened-hearted.
In the previous part, we heard Christ tell the Parable of the Sower.
In this piece, Fr. Coleridge tells us…
How the wayside soil represents those whose hearts are hardened against the Word of God.
That Satan actively seeks to snatch away the seed, using distractions, passions, fatigue and worldly concerns.
Why even small disturbances in prayer or preaching may be the subtle workings of the enemy.
… and that vigilance and recollection are necessary to receive and retain divine truth.
The Parable of the Sower
The Training of the Apostles, Vol. III
Chapter VIII
St. Matt. xiii. 18–23; St. Mark iv. 10–25; St. Luke viii. 9–18;
Story of the Gospels, § 61
Burns and Oates, London, 1884
Headings and some line breaks added.
Sung on Sexagesima Sunday
Part I: How does the Parable of the Sower unlock all Christ's other parables?
Part II: How do the birds reveal a brutal war for the soul in the Parable of the Sower?
Part III: What if your faith is shallow, and you won’t know until it’s too late?
Part IV: What makes for good soil in Christ’s Parable of the Sower?
The parable
‘The parable is this: He that soweth, soweth the Word. The seed is the Word of God. When any one heareth the Word of God and understandeth it not, there cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart. As soon as they have heard, immediately Satan cometh and taketh away the Word that was sown in their heart, lest believing they should be saved. This is he that received the Word by the wayside.’
This is the first part of the parable, and it corresponds to the few words with which it had begun—‘The sower went out to sow his seed, and some fell by the wayside, and the birds of the air came and ate it up.’
St. Luke adds one detail more, namely, that the seed was trodden down before it was eaten up. The Sower, then, is our Lord Himself, and the seed that He sows is His own, not the word of another, and whether it be this or that person who, having his commission from our Lord, sows the seed, it is our Lord’s Word, and He is the principal Sower of it.
The Word of God, how sown
The whole language of the parable seems to suggest that our Lord is mainly speaking of the sowing of the seed by means of the ordinance of preaching, for in this case it is that it is most common for seed to fall by the wayside, and to be scattered broadcast over the audience, as it were.
But still, it must be remembered that the Divine Word and the grace of God may be offered to men in many different ways and by many different means, such as example, or conversation, or reading, or that kind of contact with the truth in the persons and characters of those with whom we live, which but few people can be altogether without experiencing.
If all these kinds of the sowing of the seed are not directly included in the scope of the parable, it is certainly true that the words of the parable may be easily accommodated to them.
The explanation given by our Lord of that which He says takes place when the seed is cast by the wayside or trampled underfoot, is that men hear the Word of God and do not understand it. There are many causes of want of understanding in men, some of them intellectual and some of them moral, and we must suppose our Lord to be chiefly speaking of the latter.
It is a part of the faithfulness of God, as our Creator and Lord and Provider, not to make the Word or the doctrine of salvation too difficult for men to understand if they choose. But it is also a part of His wisdom and justice to require attention, on their part, to the message which is delivered to them in His Name.
The sensual man, St. Paul tells us, ‘perceiveth not those things which are of the Spirit of God, for it is foolishness to him, and he cannot understand.’1 And it is in this part of this great parable that we must look for the case of those who do not understand because they do not attend, and who do not attend because their hearts and minds are full of other things, other interests, other desires, which bind them down to things of earth and of sense.
The pure holy Word of God, speaking to the heart about the value of the soul and of the law of conscience, and of eternity, and of judgment, can be, in a thoroughly sensual worldly heart, only like a grain of delicate seed which has fallen out of the hand of the sower on to the common pathway, where many a foot is sure to pass in the course of a short space of time, which will infallibly crush it and destroy its life and power of fructification.
The images of sin and self indulgence on which such hearts delight to dwell, and the blasts of passion, of lust, of anger, of pride, of envy, and the like, which sweep over them from moment to moment, are like so many iron-clad heels to trample down the tiny seed which has fallen there as if by chance.
This is a different case from that to be mentioned presently, of the cares of the world and the like, which choke the seed. The heart entirely engrossed with passion, pleasure, vanity, and frivolity does not take in the Word at all, any more than the trodden pathway receives the seed into its soil.
Activity of Satan
But our Blessed Lord dwells chiefly upon another feature, in the case of such hearts as these, which it is even still more important to have continually before our minds.
He tells us of the activity of Satan in snatching the seed as it is sown. It is not enough for him that the heart is hard, it is not enough for him that men are their own tempters, their own enemies.
He must exercise his hellish vigilance and malice, in taking care that there shall be no chance left of the germination which is still possible as long as the seed remains in the heart. He must catch it away, as the birds of the air pick up the stray seeds which they find on the highway.
Here is a point in the parable which we should not, perhaps, have suspected if our Lord had not Himself drawn our attention to it—that what seems simple forgetfulness or indifference or dullness is often the direct result of the action of Satan on the soul.
It is the experience of all who try to pray or to meditate, that they are visited with a swarm of distractions and interior troubles at such times, of which they do not find themselves the victims at other times. And so it is certainly, in the case of those who hear the Word of God in the administration of the ordinance of preaching.
‘Wonderful’ (says an old writer on the parables) ‘is the envy of the demon and the hatred of Satan against those who hear the Word of God. It is then that he brings on sleep, it is then that he introduces the twittering of swallows, that is, the inopportune words of those who neither listen themselves nor will let others listen, the cries of infants, the barking of dogs.
‘It is his wont then to bring up the thought of our domestic cares, of lawsuits, and the like, which may hinder the attention, or he sets people to judge of the preachers, so as to complain of the length of their sermons, or of their too great subtlety, or their dryness, or their obscurity. He makes them pass sinister interpretations on their language, or the loudness of their voice, or on their reproofs of those whom they address.
‘In short, in every way possible he makes it his aim, either that what is said may not be heard, or that if it is heard, it may not be understood, or that if it is understood, it may slip away from the memory, or at all events may not be put into practice.’2
Importance of the Word of God
And it would certainly be a great gain to many souls if they would more carefully realise the doctrine which is contained in this passage from our Lord’s own lips, namely, that the Word of God preached from the Christian pulpit is indeed our Lord’s own word and not the word of man, and that, on the other hand, the common temptations which ordinarily hinder the great mass of men either from frequenting sermons or from profiting by them are nothing more or less than the work of the devil.
He knows what we do not realise, that the Word of God, when preached by His appointed ministers, has the promise of the assistance of Divine grace in the hearts of those who listen to it as the Word of God, and therefore it matters comparatively little whether the preacher be eloquent, or learned, or adorned by the gifts which make up the great orator.
For what is required for the cooperation of grace is the right intention on the part of the preacher, and the right and docile disposition on the part of the hearer.
How Satan acts—activity of sectarians in shutting it out
And as we constantly hear of some of his emissaries, in countries where the sect is established which makes it a rule not to call in the assistance of the Church, whether in life or in death, straining every nerve to prevent the sinner who is on his deathbed from having the opportunity of making his peace with God by means of the Catholic sacraments, and for this diabolical end watching day and night by the side of the poor dying man lest he should repent, so do these words of our Lord describe the malignant activity of the evil one in shutting out, if he can, every chance or hope of the access of the Divine Word to the soul of the hearer.
It must not be supposed that in this part of his warfare against souls Satan acts in any different manner from that in which he ordinarily acts. He prefers to make men their own tempters, and he does not interpose in his own person, with any of his more violent assaults, unless there be need.
The evil spirits have no need to show themselves prominently in the case of men who are already to a great extent their slaves, by having given themselves over to the bondage of their passions, and there is even less need for the intervention in any preternatural way of those enemies of mankind, in the case of persons who are thoroughly penetrated with the spirit of the world, which breathes a heresy more subtle, and more universally destructive and exclusive of the movements of grace, than the mere brutalities of lust or anger.
But at the same time that this is true, it is very well to be reminded, as we are by this point of the teaching of our Lord, that what appear to be little accidents and annoyances, trifles in themselves, and of no account at all, except that they are as successful and powerful as the most serious impediments that can be imagined in diverting the attention of the mind or the heart from the Word of God, are in truth the devices of the evil one, who knows as well as any most skilful general that in war nothing is to be despised.
The saints of God think nothing too minute as a precaution for securing the calm and uninterrupted leisure of the mind which has either to pray to God or to listen to God, and it is not wonderful that those who hate the intercourse of the human soul with its Maker and Lord as much as the saints and the angels love it, should avail themselves of every little thing for the sake of hindering the blessed seed, which has in itself a power of fructification so marvellous, from lighting on a soul in which the wonders which it may work are unlimited.
It has been said more than once, that it is a feature in the saintly mind to discern the action of the evil spirits in the slightest and commonest incidents of daily life, and certainly this doctrine of our Lord tends to confirm this instinct of His saints.
In the case of this seed which falls by the wayside, the hope of its success is ended when the birds of the air have done their work and taken the seed away.
But what about the seed that falls on stony ground or amongst thorns?
In the next piece, Fr. Coleridge will tell us…
How the seed on stony ground warns of souls who welcome the truth but crumble under trial.
That persecution and suffering expose whether faith is deeply rooted or doomed to wither.
Why the battle between grace and the world claims so many souls who once believed.
He will show us that only those who endure the fire of tribulation will bear lasting fruit.
Hit SUBSCRIBE now to make sure you don’t miss any future parts:
The Parable of the Sower
Part I: How does the Parable of the Sower unlock all Christ's other parables?
Part II: How do the birds reveal a brutal war for the soul in the Parable of the Sower?
Part III: What if your faith is shallow, and you won’t know until it’s too late?
Part IV: What makes for good soil in Christ’s Parable of the Sower?
Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader and share with others:
Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel
His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible
He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.
If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.
But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.
Will you lend us a hand and hit subscribe?
Read next:
Follow our projects on Twitter, YouTube and Telegram:
1 Cor. ii. 14.
Salmeron, in loc.