On 13 October 2013, His Beatitude Daniel, Patriarch of Romania delivered a sermon in the chapel of “Saint Gregory the Enlightener” of the Patriarchal Cathedral of Bucharest in which he explained the significance of the Evangelical Pericope of the 21st Sunday after Pentecost in which the “Parable of the Sower” is related.
Christ, our Saviour, presents the four states of the seed and compares them to the four kinds of faith: “The faith stolen by the demons, the faith dried because of the trials and troubles of life, the faith choked by cares, riches and pleasures of life, and the fruitful faith. This is the faith that bore fruit in the people’s souls because it fell on the good soil, namely the word of God reached the good pure heart. Here we see that Christ, our Lord, urges us to listen to the word of God not to get knowledge, but to make it fruitful, to increase the relation of love towards Him and to the fellow beings because the word of God becomes the light of the man’s life. The seed is the word of God which is sown in the world to make faith bear fruit, while the fruitful faith is the saving faith because it unites us with God, the spring of eternal life”, the Primate of the Romanian Orthodox Church explained.
His Beatitude has also explained that “The fourth seed sprang and bore fruit, while the people symbolically presented in the fourth seed are those who listen to the word of God and the word of God bears fruit in them because they have honest and good heart. The honest heart is the heart with no wickedness and falseness, the sincere and devoted heart. This is why, in the prayers of the Holy Scriptures, as for example in the Psalm 50 and in the prayers of the Church, the purification of the heart is often desired. Thus, the heart purified through repentance and good deeds, the heart in which the holiness of God is reflected is the fruitful heart in which faith is fruitful. It becomes a living, constant relationship with God and a source of merciful love for the fellow beings.”
Next Sunday, the Orthodox Church will be on the 23rd Sunday after the Pentecost.
