Jesuit Journeys
Spring/Summer 2006

Seasonal Reflection:
Planting and tending our soul's garden

By Fr. Thomas Lawler, SJ

April is the cruelest month…” says poet T.S. Eliot. I wonder if he ever tried growing tomatoes on the South Dakota prairie. I did and learned a few things about gardening and about our life with God. Our relationship with God is like that of a gardener and the soil. As Jesus explained in his parable of the seed and the sower (Matthew 13:1-23), a closer relationship with God requires our active cooperation with grace – not just sitting around waiting for God to do it all. Even if ultimately God gets the credit, we share the work. God plants a seed, but we garden and tend the soil of our souls from planting to harvest.

Quiet, reflective prayer is the first step in preparing a place for God’s grace. Like a seed, grace must be nourished or it will lie dormant, unable to take root. By practicing the art of prayer we water the grace within us. We nurture it by participating in the life of the Church through the Eucharist and other sacraments that make present for us Jesus’ actions of healing, forgiving, touching, feeding, and calling forth our gifts in service of others. The seed settles in our soil when we take time daily to examine our hearts and our actions by reading the scriptures and by following the example of Jesus.

The soil around our hearts also requires attention. Like a garden that fills up with weeds and thorns when left to itself, we too can experience internal movements and external challenges that sap our energies and move us away from God.

If the tomato plant has many leaves but few tomatoes, the gardener trims and cuts back the branches. This may seem violent at first, but it helps the plant redirect its energies and send nutrients to produce fruit instead of more leaves. In our spiritual lives, harmful attitudes and dispositions can threaten to choke out the life of God within us. When negativity, pessimism, discouragement, or cynicism color my thoughts and relations, I seek God’s help in pruning and weeding where needed.

Finally, growth in the garden cannot be rushed. But if I patiently visit my plants daily and check carefully, I can see them actually change overnight. Growth happens mostly in the dark, when no one is watching. The garden grows in secret, at its own pace. Sometimes in late spring, a cold frost bites the fragile seedlings. They seem to die, turning brown and lifeless on the soil. But after a few days, I may find a new green leaf appearing from the dead, lifeless stem.

In the end, growth in Christ requires faith, heroic trust, patience, and much hope. Often, God’s grace is planted like a seed that takes a long time to sprout, mature, and ripen. When fruit finally appears, it may not look as perfect as the picture on the seed package. But with some cooperation on our part, some weeding, pruning, and a little patience, our relationship with God will bear fruit “yielding a hundred, 60, or 30 times what was sown.”