How can Good Seed Produce a Yield of Thirty, Sixty or a Hundred Fold?

There was a farmer who grew excellent-quality corn. Every year he won the award for the best-grown corn.

A newspaper reporter interviewed him one year and learned something interesting about how he grew it. The reporter discovered that the farmer shared his seed corn with his neighbors.

“How can you afford to share your best seed corn with your neighbors when they are entering corn in competition with yours each year?” the reporter asked.

“Why sir,” said the farmer, “Didn’t you know? The wind picks up pollen from the ripening corn and swirls it from field to field. If my neighbors grow inferior corn, cross-pollination will steadily degrade the quality of my corn. If I am to grow good corn, I must help my neighbors grow good corn.” (Adapted from Seed by John Kelldénf)

So, it is with our lives…?

This story reminds me so much of a U-pick vegetable farm that I worked on for several summers while homeschooling my children.

This farm family was a perfect example of the generosity revealed in the heart of the farmer in the story.

In so many instances this family would give food away to feed many families as well as hidden treasures for the children who happened by the farm.

The following quote was taken from the Magnificat and seemed to fit so well in the definition of an abundant harvest.

“If we truly wish to be saints, it is more a question of joy than of suffering.

Sanctity is nothing else but allowing ourselves to be made like God, and to do this it is necessary to study him, to concentrate on him and not on ourselves.

Sanctity belongs to the house of God, and our souls are living houses of God, where he loves to dwell.

I would like to offer Jesus as many of these temples as I can, so that he may be where he said that he finds delight, namely, with the children of men (Prov. 8:31)

As St. Paul of the Cross said, ‘He who does not take care of the house of his own person, how can he take care of the house of God?’

I shall begin with my own soul, and when I have made it into a permanent dwelling place for the Lord, I shall do all things else easily.

But I am not content simply with saving souls or converting sinners; that is too little for such a great love.

Jesus wants them to be saints; he wants to press them close to his heart and give them the tender kiss of love; he is not content only with the kiss of forgiveness.

I think now you would like to know what I do in order to promote these great ideas that inspire me.

I do nothing more than try to perfect myself more and more each day in the things that everybody does.

I seek sacrifices I can offer to Jesus in the secret of my heart.” (Venerable Mary Magdalen of Jesus in the Eucharist, C.P.)?

St Paul encourages us to run this race so as to win because, "In Him we were also chosen as God’s own, having been predestined according to the plan of Him who works out everything by the counsel of His will,?in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, would be for the praise of his glory." (Ep1:11-12)

May we seek to run the race not only during the Lenten Season but continue to manifest the good work, the Good Seed, that God has planted in our hearts for all eternity!