Good morning.  There’s a famous African proverb, which says, “The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago; the next best time is now.”  Sometimes, when I look back over the journey that has been my life thus far, what disappoints me most is the opportunities along that way that were missed, the chances that were lost.  And I’m thinking especially of the opportunities for friendship and the chances for relationships that because of pride, or because of arrogance, or because of fear, or some feeling of being inferior, were never realized.  Recently, I was walking through the streets of Dublin and along one of the busier streets, just by chance, happened to bump into a guy with whom I had shared most of the six years that I spent in the seminary.  He was a person that I always admired from a distance, because in the years that we shared the same roof we never really got to know each other.  And bumping into him a few months ago on a busy street in Dublin on a Thursday afternoon, it really was a bit like meeting something of my own self.  And ever since that day we have been in touch almost every week.

I suppose like the seed that fell on rocky ground in this morning’s gospel, the ground for friendship with that person all those years ago just wasn’t fertile, neither in him, nor in me.  So we had to wait until the time was right, which just happens to be now.  But imagine the tragedy had we missed that other golden moment in our lives, to know harm for us this morning in light of today’s gospel, to reflect for a moment on lost opportunities, missed chances in our lives.

Not to beat ourselves up over those chances that are now gone, but so that should those opportunities arise again for us today, or tomorrow, or the next day, that we will be ready to embrace the opportunities that will come our way, to check out the rocky ground in me that may be creating very unfortunate limitations in my life, in my relationships with other people, or indeed, in my relationship with God.

When I reflect on the story that has been my life thus far I’m amazed at the moments and the people who have reached that fertile place that is in me, that place in me where the soil happens to be rich.  Sometimes as priests we get the opportunity to meet very important people and from time to time we are invited to share the platform with people of very high profile.  But when I reflect on the story that has been my journey, none of those moments have been particularly memorable.  The people and the moments that have been significant in my life have all been moments of incredible ordinariness.  The people and the moments that have touched me have been moments that were they to know of those times, would create great shock and great surprise for them.  Usually it has been a lasting impression that someone has left on me because of something they said, or because of a particular way they acted at a particular moment in time, or because of the attitude that they displayed, or because of the way they lived their lives.  And there are numerous and many examples of those types of people in my story of life. And what sets them all apart from everyone else that I have met who haven’t had that significant impact is that these people were all people who lived authentic lives, people who were true to themselves.  People who are authentic don’t have to say anything and they don’t have to do anything because it shows in their faces; it spills out from their pores.  I think it was Polonius in his famous farewell speech to Laertes who said, “And this above all, to thine own self be true.  I cannot then be false to any person.”

That self-truth is unique in all of us, every single one of us.  And when it is lived, it cannot be disguised; it cannot be hidden.  In my life that’s the most fertile of all the ground, and the people who have learned to live authentically touch me in that sacred place where there are no guises to hide behind.  It’s very rich soil and I don’t walk there often enough.

So for me the parable of the sower isn’t about some of us being one type or the other type.  Instead it’s about that barren and fertile ground that lies within almost every one of us.  And it’s also about all those many seeds that are being sown around us each and every day of our lives, and it’s about seeds that I too am sowing around others, and all too often I’m unaware.  And the great gift that helps us to avoid the pitfall of missed opportunities is the gift and the virtue of awareness.  Noticing what it is that blinds me.  Noticing what it is that deafens me to those golden moments that every day are coming our way.  And it’s also about heightening my consciousness and my awareness of the impact that I am having on the people who live around me, and the impact that you are having on the people who live around you.  Heightening our awareness of that presence to others, their presence to us, those people with whom we share this very sacred space, this holy ground.

Back in Ireland, we have this now famous poet.  He died about 1967, but during his life he enjoyed very little regard, for all sorts of reasons that were personal to him.  He even called his autobiography The Green Fool, because he knew that he was regarded as a fool, and the green refers to his rural parish background.  But since his death, and after all this time, 30 and more years, in Ireland we are beginning to realize and understand the rich legacy and the incredible heritage that Patrick Kavanagh left us in a huge volume of poetry.  There is a dawning awareness right before us that under the guise of a vagrant, and sometimes a drunk, was a man now considered by many to have been a prophet in his own time, and perhaps even a mystic.  He possessed this very special gift for recognizing the sacred in the ordinary.  And in his blunt, farm yard language he sees reflections of God even in the ordinary details of life on a farm.  He talks about where the sow roots and the hen scratches.  And in another poem he talks beautifully about, “…girls in red blouses, steps up to houses, sunlight around gables, gossips, young fables, life of a street.”

Every moment, every moment is ablaze with the glory of God.  But because of the ground within us that is as yet unfertile, very often it’s passing us by, or very often we are passing it by.  Blinded, deafened, by our own limitations.  And in my experience of living in this world, that glory is always to be found, almost always in the unexpected corners of extraordinary ordinariness.

Perhaps the call of the parable of the sower, or one of the calls of the parable of the sower, is in those other famous words of Paddy Kavanagh, now regarded, now renowned.  It’s very simply that we “lie down again, deep in anonymous humility so that God might find us worthy material for his hand.”