In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. A sower went out to sow his seed. With these words Christ begins the parable of the sower we heard in this morning’s gospel. We have in this parable an image of God as a gardener.
In fact, in the Gospel of John, when Christ appeared to Mary Magdalene after his resurrection as we heard in this morning’s eoethian gospel, she didn’t recognize him at first, and she supposed that he was the gardener isn’t that interesting. And as a gardener, God is sowing his seed everywhere indiscriminately on all types of ground along the path, on the rock, among the thorns, and on good soil. As Christ explains, the seed God is sowing is the Word of God. He spreads his seed in every place and will not stop until he reaches us and gets through to us.
God is persistent and is coming to us, and it cannot be any other way, because God is in love, it is in his nature to love us and to desire us with such intensity. St. Gregory of Nises said that when Christ uttered the words “I thirst while hanging on the cross,” that this doesn’t refer only to bodily thirst. It also refers to a relational thirst that God thirsts for mankind more than anything else in the world, so much more that Christ gave his very life to restore our communion with him.
And not only is God a gardener, but man himself, who is in the image and likeness of God, was created to be a gardener as well. We read in the book of Genesis that God places man in the garden in order to tend to it and to keep it. And the Holy Fathers teach that the garden man is called to cultivate is the garden of his own heart. Although God solves his seed indiscriminately, whether or not the seed falls on good ground and produces fruit is entirely up to us.
God solves the seed, but the cultivation of the soil is our responsibility. There does the cultivation of the garden of our heart begin. The Holy Fathers teach us that it begins with the thoughts we choose to cultivate and to nurture. It’s important to remember not only is God working to draw us to himself, but Satan, the enemy of man, is also working to draw us to himself.
He is trying to plant his seeds in us by suggesting evil thoughts. Adam was attacked by thoughts in the Garden of Eden. Christ was attacked by thoughts in the Garden of the Katsemane, and we are attacked by thoughts in the Garden of our heart. Christ himself said, “Out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts.” But these thoughts don’t originate in man, they’re from Satan, from the outside.
He plants the seed of an evil thought in our mind, and when we cooperate with him, when we entertain the thought and nourish it, that is when it descends into our heart and we begin to water the seed he plants and allow it to take root in us and to grow. So you have the seeds planted by God, which when cultivated grow into the beautiful flowers of the virtues, then you have the seeds planted by Satan, which when cultivated grow into weeds and thorns, and they take over the Garden. In order to preserve the beauty of a Garden, it must constantly be maintained with vigilance. Saint Ezekiel Supreme says that cutting off evil thoughts contributes more to the purity of heart than anything else.
Just like we build a fence along a Garden at home, we must build a fence along the Garden of our hearts to keep unwanted animals, the demons, and the thoughts that they inspire to keep them out. We heard in the parable today that it is the devil that comes and tries to take away the seed God plants in our heart and transplant his own seed in us. The fence protects the good seeds that are being cultivated from the evil seed Satan is trying to plant. In other words, the fence helps us keep the good thoughts in and the bad thoughts out.
The Holy Father’s called this fence around the Garden of our heart by the Greek word nipses, which translates into watchfulness. Saint Paisius uses the analogy of an airport. He says the brain is like an airport and thoughts are like airplanes flying in the air. You have to ignore the evil thoughts.
If you give them attention, they will land in your airport and descend into your heart. We must be watchful and dismiss the evil thought immediately so that it does not land. If we do that, we have not sinned. It’s when we engage the evil thought that we sinned.
At that point, the battle against sin becomes an uphill battle. So don’t let the evil thoughts land. One practical advice, how do we cultivate good thoughts and cut off the evil ones? Saint Paul tells us in chapter 4 of his epistle to the Philippians, “Whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are good report, if there is any virtue, if there is anything praiseworthy, think on these things.
In order to cultivate good and holy thoughts, we must think about good and holy things. Thinking about the love of God and the kingdom of heaven, reading scripture, hearing the words of Christ, his teachings, his parables, his miracles, reading the lives of the saints and reflecting on their zeal and love for God, reading the writings of the Holy Fathers, doing our daily prayers, saying the Jesus prayer, attending daily services, this is what cultivates good and holy thoughts. In fact, Saint Isaac the Syrian says that the remembrance of holy things is a better way to fight the passions than resistance. The more good thoughts we feed our heart, the more it leans towards good thoughts.
And the more evil thoughts we feed it, the more it leans towards evil thoughts. One of the greatest weapons we have in our fight against evil thoughts is the sacrament of confession. When we come to confession, we don’t only confess the sins we commit by word indeed, we also confess our thoughts because that’s how sin starts. This is the reason Christ was so concerned about our thoughts.
This is why he said, “If you lust after someone, you have already committed adultery in your heart.” A monk once told me something very interesting, that in the monastery, they don’t often fall into sin because they confess a bad thought to their elder as soon as it comes. They don’t wait to fall. They don’t allow the seed to be planted. Keeping our evil thoughts secret will only cause them to fester inside of us and to grow worse.
And the devil will continue to attack us with thoughts and memories of our past sins. In one of the morning prayers to the Theotokos we pray, “Banish from my wretched heart, all filthy, evil, and blasphemous thoughts, and deliver me from many and cruel memories and deeds, and free me from all their evil effects.” When we bring our evil thoughts out in the open and verbalize them in the sacrament of confession, we receive divine grace and protection and healing and consolation from our Lord and Savior. One of the greatest ways the devil fights us is by planting in us the thought of not going to confession or prolonging the time in between our confessions. The more we prolong, the longer we remain in our sin, and the more difficult it becomes to fight the evil thoughts.
We should go to confession monthly and keep a daily log of our sinful thoughts that we bring to confession right down your sins, including your thoughts. This will allow you and your spiritual father to identify a pattern so that together you can more effectively work on rooting out the passions that you struggle with. And finally, the last point I want to make, the more you practice cultivating good thoughts and cutting off evil ones, the better you get at anticipating them. You begin to see the thoughts from a distance, anticipating the attacks of Satan and the evil thoughts he will throw your way.
It’s like your own internal missile defense system. You detect the thought coming and destroy it before it lands. In other words, you begin to rehearse in your mind the Christian responds to difficult and troubling situations before they happen. You begin to mentally prepare yourself to encounter difficult people who may behave unjustly towards you, whether it be a family member, a friend, a coworker, a classmate, or a fellow church member.
You ask yourself, how would Christ respond in this difficult situation? How would he respond to the behavior of this person? How would the saints respond? You reflect on that ahead of time and you imitate them.
This is how you form a strategy to fight Satan and to live a virtuous life. This is how you cultivate good soil in the garden of your heart and bring forth food with patience as we heard in this morning’s gospel. Let me close with a quote from St. John of Cronstadt.
He says, “Watch your heart during all your life, examine it, listen to it, and see what prevents its union with the most blessed Lord. Let this be for you the science of all sciences and with God’s help, you will easily observe what exchanges you from God and what draws you towards Him and unites you to Him. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.”