Reading: Isaiah 55:10-11
Gospel: Matthew 6:7-15

Dear brothers in the episcopate,
Dear brothers and sisters in the Lord!

Pages 13-14: “My word shall not return to me empty!” When the prophet Isaiah spoke these words, he was hardly stating the obvious. Rather, he was contradicting what were most likely the expectations of his listeners. The verses of the reading belong in the context of Israel’s history of sorrows, in which God repeatedly calls his people in vain, in which his word remains fruitless, in which God appears on the stage of history – but not as a victor. All the signs he has performed – the miracle at the Red Sea, the inauguration of the royal period, Israel’s return from exile – come to nothing. God’s seed in the world seems ineffectual. The word God speaks in today’s text thus comes in the midst of a cloud of darkness as an encouragement to all who still believe in God’s power; who believe that the world is more than rocky ground in which the seed finds no room to take root; who believe that the world is still something more than shallow soil where the sparrows of banality immediately peck away any seed that falls into it (cf. Mk 4:1-9).
Note: In context, God’s word will never fail as all prophecies will be fulfilled.
“For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.” Matthew 5:18.

Page 14: For us Christians, these words are a promise of Jesus Christ, in whom the Word of God really penetrated the earth and became bread for us all. He is the seed that bears fruit through the centuries, the fruitful answer in which God’s speech has taken living root in this word. The mystery of Christ is almost nowhere so palpable and intimately connected with the mystery of Mary as in the perspective of this promise. When the text says that the word, or the seed, bears fruit, it means that, unlike a ball that hits the ground and bounces back up, the seed actually sinks into the earth, assimilates the earth’s energies, and changes them into itself. It thus brings about something truly new, for now it carries the earth in itself and turns the earth into fruit.
Note: In context, as natural rain brings forth food, so shall supernatural prophecies be fulfilled.
 “For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth, and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” Isaiah 55:10-11.

Page 14: The grain of wheat does not remain alone, for it includes the maternal mystery of the soil – Mary, the holy soil of the Church, as the Fathers so wonderfully call her, is an essential part of Christ. The mystery of Mary means precisely that God’s Word did not remain alone; rather, it assimilated the other – the soil – into itself, became man in the “soil” of his Mother, and then fused with the soil of the whole of humanity, returned to God in a new form.
Note: Mary had no part in the establishment of the Church.
Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. Ephesians 2:19-22.

Page 14: The Gospel, by contrast, seems to be talking about an entirely different subject. The text speaks of how we should pray, of the right form and content of prayer, of the right way of acting, and of the right kind of interiority in prayer. It speaks, in other words, not of what God does, but of what we men do in relation to him.
Note: Christians are to pray to God not to Mary.
“And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words. Therefore do not be like them. For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him. 9In this manner, therefore, pray: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” Matthew 6:7-15.

Pages 14-15: The truth of the matter is that there is an intimate connection between the two readings. One could even say that the Gospel explains how men can become fruitful soil for God’s Word. They can become this soil by providing, as it were, the organic elements in which life can grow and mature; by drawing life themselves from this organic matter; by becoming themselves a word formed by the penetration of the Word; by sinking the roots of their life into prayer and thus into God.
Note: Do you meditate on the Word of God regularly?
How can a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed according to Your word. With my whole heart I have sought You; Oh, let me not wander from Your commandments! Your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You. Blessed are You, O Lord! Teach me Your statutes. With my lips I have declared all the judgments of Your mouth. I have rejoiced in the way of Your testimonies, as much as in all riches. I will meditate on Your precepts, and contemplate Your ways. I will delight myself in Your statutes; I will not forget Your word. Psalm 119:9-16.

Page 15: Our Gospel reading thus has a point of contact with the initiation into the mystery of Mary that Saint Luke gives us when he says in several passages that Mary “kept” the words in her heart (2:19; 2:51; cf. 1:29).
Note: Do you meditate on the Word of God regularly?
And behold, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon, and this man was just and devout, waiting for the Consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. So he came by the Spirit into the temple. And when the parents brought in the Child Jesus, to do for Him according to the custom of the law, he took Him up in his arms and blessed God and said: “Lord, now You are letting Your servant depart in peace, according to Your word; For my eyes have seen Your salvation which You have prepared before the face of all peoples, a light to bring revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of Your people Israel.” And Joseph and His mother marveled at those things which were spoken of Him. Then Simeon blessed them, and said to Mary His mother, “Behold, this Child is destined for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign which will be spoken against (yes, a sword will pierce through your own soul also), that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”Luke 2:25-35.

Page 15: Mary was, so to say, the confluence of the streams of Israel; in prayer she bore the mystery and grandeur of its history and so enabled it to become fertile soil for the living God. Of course, prayer, as the Gospel tells us, involves considerably more than prattling, than mere talk. To be soil for the Word means that the soil must allow itself to be absorbed by the seed, to be assimilated by the seed, to surrender itself for the sake of transforming the seed into life. Mary’s maternity means that she willingly places her own substance, body and soul, into the seed so that new life can grow. When Luke says that a sword shall pierce her soul (Lk 2:35), he means much more profound and much greater: Mary makes herself entirely available as soil; she lets herself be used (brauchen) and used up, in order to be transformed into the One who needs (braucht) us in order to become the fruit of the earth.
Note: The prophecy of Luke 2:35 was fulfilled when Jesus Christ dying for the sins of the world.
Now there stood by the cross of Jesus His mother, and His mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing by, He said to His mother, “Woman, behold your son!” Then He said to the disciple, “Behold your mother!” And from that hour that disciple took her to his own home. John 19:25-27.

Pages 15-16: Today’s Liturgy of the Hours says that we must become a longing for God. The Fathers of the Church say that prayer, properly understood, is nothing other than becoming a longing for God. In Mary this petition has been granted: she is, as it were, the open vessel of longing, in which life becomes prayer and prayer becomes life. Saint John wonderfully conveys this process by never mentioning Mary’s name in his Gospel. She no longer has any name except “the Mother of Jesus”. It is as if she had handed over her personal dimension, in order now to be solely at his disposal, and precisely thereby had become a person.
Note: Are you focused on Jesus Christ or on Mary?
“I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples.” John 15:5-8.

Page 16: In my opinion, the connection between the mystery of Christ and the mystery of Mary suggested to us by today’s readings is very important in our age of activism, in which the Western mentality has evolved to the extreme. For in today’s intellectual climate, only the masculine principle counts. And that means doing, achieving results, actively planning and producing the world oneself, refusing to wait for anything upon which one would thereby become dependent, relying rather, solely on one’s own abilities. It is, I believe, no coincidence, given our Western, masculine mentality, that we have increasingly separated Christ from his Mother, without grasping that Mary’s motherhood might have some significance for theology and faith. This attitude characterizes our whole approach to the Church. We treat the Church almost like some technological device that we plan and make with enormous cleverness and expenditure of energy. Then we are surprised when we experience the truth of what Saint Louis-Marie Grignon de Montfort once remarked, paraphrasing the words of the prophet Haggai, when he said, “You do much, but nothing comes of it” (Hag 1:6)! When making becomes autonomous, the things we cannot make but are alive and need time to mature can no longer survive.
Note: The Church is a dynamic gathering of Christians from all ages in Jesus Christ.
Therefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers: that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come. And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. Ephesians 1:15-23.

Pages 16-17: What we need, then, is to abandon this one-sided, Western activistic outlook, lest we degrade the Church to a product of our creation and design. The Church is not a manufactured item; she is, rather, the living seed of God that must be allowed to grow and ripen. This is why the Church needs the Marian mystery; this is why the Church herself is a Marian mystery. There can be fruitfulness in the Church only when she has this character, when she becomes holy soil for the Word. We must retrieve the symbol of the fruitful soil; we must once more become waiting, inwardly recollected people who in the depth of prayer, longing, and faith give the Word room to grow.
Note: The mystery of the Church is the love of Jesus Christ that is to be shown toward one another.
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Ephesians 5:25-32.

Pages 17-18: At this Holy Mass, we commemorate Cardinal Josef Frings, long-time President of the German Bishops’ Conference, who departed this life last Advent. He died in the Advent season, which since ancient times has been the church’s true Marian season. It seems to me that this circumstance expresses the course and direction of his life. Cardinal Frings entrusted the Church of God in Germany to Mary’s maternal care. He consecrated her to Mary. In the midst of a rising tide of activism, he wanted to place the Church under the law of humble fruit-bearing for the Word. At the Council, when the liturgical, Christological, and ecumenical movements opposed the Marian movement, and the two parties threatened to become irreconcilable alternatives, he addressed an imploring appeal to the Fathers to find the common center. He emphatically rejected a shortsighted, hasty either-or, as if the Church now had to decide whether to become modern, biblical, liturgical, and ecumenical or to remain “old-fashioned” and Marian. It was his personal concern to join the two streams together, to give the liturgy the heartfelt intensity of Marian piety and to open to Marian piety the breadth of the liturgical tradition. This was one of the most personal appeals that he addressed – moved by the passion of faith – to the Council Fathers. This appeal stands before us – especially at this hour – as a guidepost, pointing the way to a renewed acknowledgment and acceptance of the mystery of the earth, so that the Word may thus bear fruit in us. Amen.
Note: Jesus Christ should always have the preeminence in all things within the Christian Church.
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence. Colossians 1:15-18.

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