The Soil Must Be Broken

The Word of God does not fail. The question is what kind of earth we have become.

“Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns.”

— Jeremiah 4:3

There is something almost frightening about the generosity of the sower.

He does not carefully ration the seed. He scatters it everywhere: onto the road, among stones, into thorns, upon good earth. God is not reluctant to speak. He is not withholding Himself until we become worthy. The Word falls continually upon the human heart.

And yet much of it bears no fruit.

Christ does not soften this truth.

The problem is not the seed.

The problem is the soil.

This is one of those Gospel passages that becomes dangerous when we hear it only as a description of other people. We immediately recognize the categories. We know people who are hardened. We know people whose faith seems shallow. We know people consumed by possessions and anxieties. And perhaps we quietly imagine ourselves among those who possess the “honest and good heart.”

The Fathers would not permit us that comfort.

They would tell us to go into the cell, close the door, and discover all four soils within ourselves.

There are places in the heart that have become roads.

They have been walked upon so often that nothing can enter them anymore.

Old resentments have passed over them. Opinions have passed over them. Injuries remembered and rehearsed have passed over them. The need to be right has passed over them. Fear has passed over them. Vanity has passed over them. Endless noise has passed over them.

Eventually the earth becomes packed hard.

The Word still falls there.

But it remains on the surface.

We hear the Gospel and nothing happens.

We hear “forgive,” and immediately remember why forgiveness is impossible.

We hear “do not judge,” and begin explaining why our judgment is justified.

We hear “sell what you possess,” and begin negotiating.

We hear “love your enemies,” and turn it into an abstraction.

We hear “follow Me,” and ask where.

The seed has fallen.

But the heart has become a road.

Then there is the rocky ground.

This soil is more deceptive because something actually grows.

There can be enthusiasm. Religious fervor. Tears. Conferences. Books. Pilgrimages. New disciplines. New devotions. New communities. New spiritual identities.

The seed springs up quickly.

And we mistake intensity for depth.

But roots grow in darkness.

This is why the desert tradition has always distrusted spiritual excitement. The Fathers knew how easily we can fall in love with the experience of God while avoiding the slow death required to belong to Him.

Roots are formed when prayer becomes dry and we continue praying.

Roots are formed when no consolation comes.

Roots are formed when obedience costs us something.

Roots are formed when the person we thought ourselves to be begins to disappear.

Roots are formed when God does not explain Himself.

Anyone can receive the Word with joy.

The question is whether we will remain when joy disappears.

Then there are the thorns.

Perhaps these are the most dangerous because Christ does not say that the seed dies.

It grows.

But something else grows beside it.

“The cares and riches and pleasures of life.”

Notice the subtlety.

The Word has not been rejected.

It has merely been crowded.

This may be the great spiritual danger of respectable religious life.

We can love God and still cultivate a thousand competing loves.

We can pray and remain consumed by reputation.

We can speak about Providence while obsessively arranging the future.

We can preach poverty while fiercely protecting comfort.

We can speak about surrender while secretly insisting that life unfold according to our design.

We can even fill our lives with religious things until there is no room left for God.

The thorns do not need to destroy faith.

They only need to keep it from ripening.

That is enough.

A distracted heart rarely becomes an evil heart.

It simply becomes an unfruitful one.

And this is why the Fathers speak so relentlessly about watchfulness.

Guard the heart.

Watch what enters.

Watch what you repeatedly think about.

Watch the conversations you conduct in your imagination.

Watch what you resent.

Watch what you crave.

Watch the fantasies in which you are admired, vindicated, understood, desired, successful, secure.

These things are not harmless.

They are seeds too.

And whatever we repeatedly permit to enter the soil eventually grows there.

We cannot cultivate thorns all week and then wonder why the Gospel struggles to breathe within us.

The spiritual life therefore requires something far more painful than inspiration.

It requires cultivation.

The soil must be worked.

Sometimes it must be broken.

A plow does violence to hardened earth, but only so that the earth may become capable of receiving life.

Repentance is that plow.

Silence is that plow.

Confession is that plow.

Forgiveness is that plow.

Fasting is that plow.

The Jesus Prayer is that plow.

Accepting humiliation without immediately defending ourselves can be that plow.

Remaining before God when there is nothing to feel can be that plow.

And suffering, when received without allowing it to make us bitter, can reach depths that almost nothing else can touch.

The modern elders repeatedly return to this same truth: the heart must become soft.

Not sentimental.

Soft.

There is an enormous difference.

A sentimental heart wants to feel spiritual things.

A softened heart can be wounded without becoming stone.

It can be contradicted without hatred.

It can lose what it loves without accusing God.

It can discover its own sin without despair.

It can stand before the incomprehensible and say only:

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.

This is good soil.

Not a flawless heart.

Not an undisturbed heart.

Not the heart of someone whose life has finally become orderly.

Good soil is broken soil.

It has been opened.

Turned over.

Exposed.

Emptied of stones.

Cleared repeatedly of thorns.

And none of this happens once.

Anyone who has tended a garden knows the humiliating truth: weeds return.

So do ours.

Vanity returns.

Anger returns.

Fear returns.

The desire to control returns.

Old injuries return.

The fantasy of another life returns.

The need to be understood returns.

And so we return to the heart.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Not obsessively examining ourselves, but quietly placing ourselves before God.

This is the labor of repentance.

Not constructing a better religious personality.

Tending the earth.

The final words of Christ are therefore crucial.

The good soil consists of those who hear the Word, hold it fast, and “bring forth fruit with patience.”

With patience.

The Greek word carries the sense of endurance, steadfastness, remaining under the weight.

The fruit does not appear because we have finally mastered the spiritual life.

It appears because we stayed.

We stayed when prayer became empty.

We stayed when certainty disappeared.

We stayed when plans collapsed.

We stayed when others misunderstood us.

We stayed when the old identity could no longer sustain us.

We stayed when God seemed silent.

We stayed before Him.

And slowly, beneath soil that appeared barren, something was growing.

This may be one of the deepest lessons of the desert.

God does not ask us to manufacture fruit.

He asks us to tend the soil.

The seed contains the life.

The rain belongs to God.

The sun belongs to God.

The increase belongs to God.

Our task is smaller and more severe:

Keep the heart open.

Pull the thorns.

Remove the stones.

Break the hardened earth.

Receive the Word.

And remain.

Perhaps this is why Christ ends not with an explanation but with a cry:

“He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

Because the terrible possibility remains that we can spend an entire lifetime around holy things and never allow them to enter us.

We can read the Fathers.

We can know theology.

We can receive the sacraments.

We can speak beautifully about prayer.

We can teach others about the interior life.

And beneath all of it the earth can remain untouched.

The desert asks a simpler question.

Not:

What do you know?

Not:

What have you accomplished?

Not even:

What have you suffered?

But:

What has the Word of God been permitted to do to your heart?

If the answer is that it has broken something open, then do not be afraid of the breaking.

The plow is not the enemy of the field.

It is preparing the earth for resurrection.

Let God turn the soil.

Let Him uncover what has been buried.

Let Him remove what cannot bear fruit.

Let Him make the heart poor enough, quiet enough, wounded enough, and open enough to receive the seed.

Then leave the harvest to Him.

The seed knows what to do.

Our work is to become earth.