ACC ~ Mark 4 v20

BECOMING GOOD SOIL

AUGUSTINE: Work diligently the soil while you may. Break up your fallow with the plough. Cast away the stones from your field, and dig out the thorns. Be unwilling to have a “hard heart,” such as makes the Word of God of no effect. [1] Be unwilling to have a “thin layer of soil,” in which the root of divine love can find no depth in which to enter. Be unwilling to “choke the good seed” by the cares and the lusts of this life, when it is being scattered for your good. When God is the sower and we are the ground, we are called to work to be good ground. [2] SERMONS ON NEW TESTAMENT LESSONS 73.3. [3]

[1] Cf. Ps 95:8; Prov 28:14; Mk 16:14.

[2] Is 1:19-20; Hos 10:12; Lk 6:47-48.

[3] Cetedoc 0284, 73.38.471.25; GMI 83**; cf. NPNF 1 6:334.

THE PERPETUAL STREAM

EPHREM THE SYRIAN: The fields have but one season of harvest; but from the Scripture there gushes forth a stream of saving doctrine. The field when reaped lies idle, and at rest, and the branches when the vine is stripped lie withered and dead. The Scriptures are garnered each day, yet the years of its interpreters never come to an end; and the clusters of its vines, which in it are those of hope, though are gathered each day, are likewise without end. COMMENTARY ON TATIAN’S DIATESSARON, PROEM. [1]

[1] SSGF 2:44-45; Vossio, St. Ephraem 686 (Cologne, 1616); Proem to Mark 9.