The word, the seed sown by the sower, contains within itself the germ of the Kingdom of Heaven. Falling into our hearts, it begins to sprout into an ear of new life. But in this parable the sower does not act alone. Without soil—that is, without us—the seed cannot sprout. As Jesus observes, the more we participate in this process, the more fruit we bear. This produces an apparent injustice: the richer we are, the richer we become. Yet the issue here is probably not spiritual wealth, but how much of our capital—our time, attention, strength, and finally our whole life—we are willing to invest in this shared process of cultivating the Kingdom.

To uphold truth means not only not to deceive, not to hide, not to act hypocritically, not to flatter. It also means not to hide ourselves. Very often we hide our sins and our feelings from people and from ourselves. To uphold truth means to stand before people and before Christ. Not to try to hide our face behind a mask of self-justification.

This is hard. It is almost impossible if we are aggressive. If we expect people's judgment and fear it. Our turtle-like ability to hide in our shell makes us constantly expect judgment and accusation. We close ourselves off from mercy. We do not surrender, like criminals who are sure their guilt will not be proven. That is why there is the feeling of being constantly cornered, the constant fear with which it is impossible to live and from which we lock ourselves into depression. Because of it, we also constantly accuse everyone and everything around us.

The mercy we are called to practice is the ability to see other people worn down by fear of condemnation, fear that their real self will be exposed. It is the ability to receive people without distorting real feelings and relationships by this fear. Fear of human warmth. Fear of someone else's love, attention, and patience, which we think we do not need.

We agree to distance ourselves from all that is best in people, driving ourselves into a far and cold corner of the universe. There, it seems to us, the light of Christ, the light of His love that illumines people, will not reach us and will not make us suffer from shame and our own smallness. But when, through the pain of having the mask of deceit torn from us, we gain the whole world, then we gain life, the truth about ourselves, the image of Christ in every person, and the glory of those who have overcome sin and despair.

Jesus' parables are something halfway between amusing stories from everyday life and riddles: in them He explains the inexpressible, the Message of His Kingdom, in simple human language. Many of them begin just this way: "The Kingdom of God is like someone who..." - and then He sketches a situation familiar to His listeners, revealing to them the essence of His Gospel.

So, the most famous parable is about how the Word of God, like a seed, must fall into fertile soil in order to bear fruit and not be lost in vain. The evangelist wonderfully completes the parable by giving, immediately after it, the account of Jesus' family, where He speaks to the disciples a new riddle that expresses the same Message in other words: "Whoever hears the Word and does it has entered My family".

The listeners only have to compare these parable-riddles to understand what the Kingdom consists in that their Teacher brought to earth. Through his book, the evangelist offers this task not just to the small circle of disciples, but to all readers of the Gospel.