The Parable of the Papal Interview

Hear this!

A pope went out to give an interview. And as he talked, some of his words fell to the media, and those birds gobbled them up before they could even be heard.

Others of his words fell to those who didn’t understand his context. They received his message with joy, but the first time it occurred to them how difficult it would be to live by those words, their enthusiasm withered like seedlings in a drought.

Some of his words fell among cranky people who believed those words contradicted everything they had ever worked for, and the crankiness in their own hearts strangled the message, and they said, “No fruit here for our kind.”

And some of his words fell like good rain on the patches of rich soil others had dismissed as just dirt. His message fell like healing balm on hearts and minds and bodies of people who had gotten used to just limping along. The pope’s words exploded in the midst of some people like a seed cone in a forest fire, crackling to evergreen life out of barrenness.

The seed of the pope’s interview came up and grew and yielded  thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold.

Jesus explained in detail to his confused apostles the parable this is based on, and the many perils the proclamation of the Gospel faces in our world. Nowhere, though, did that explanation include the phrase, “The sower should have kept that seed to himself.”

Let all who have ears, hear. And give thanks.

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For more on the America interview, see the bloggers of the Patheos Catholic Channel. Everybody’s weighing in. But first, read the interview yourself. Be good ground, and let the seed fall unimpeded.