Reading Time: 13 minutes The Spiritual Mysteries of the Divine Calendar: The Parable of the Sower — The Secret to Spiritual Growth ~ November 2–8, 2025 ~ 

How marvelous that God sees our souls as His field (1 Cor. 3:9), where He sows His words—His truths—that mold and shape us into the men and women of God He created us to be. Just as a child grows into a mature person, God works within our inner being so that it may grow into the image of Christ in which we are made. We do not yet know what we shall be when our inner man reaches its full and mature state—one that will remain for eternity—but the Holy Spirit works constantly, sowing the Word of God so that we may grow toward the fullness of our being. Jesus told the Parable of the Sower to unveil these spiritual realities.

As we read in the first letter of John: “Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is” (1 John 3:2).

Growth Toward Eternity

As we grow toward Christlikeness, experiencing the salvation of Jesus extending in the land of our souls, we are transformed. Ideally, those around us will notice a positive change in our lives as the years pass while we follow Jesus. Our relatively short earthly life, during which God matures us toward our eternal state, can be seen as the womb of our eternal life. When we pass through physical death, we are born into eternal life.

As we approach the conclusion of the first Season of Salvation in the Divine Calendar—the Season of the Kingdom of God—the Parable of the Sower reveals the mysteries of the final two weeks of this Season of Salvation.

The monastic spiritual giant Saint Macarius the Great wrote in his Fifty Homilies that we put off our outer man in death, and our inner man is made visible for all eternity. Yet the growth of our inner man, as God plants the seeds of the qualities of our eternal life into our souls, is not without challenges. This Sunday Gospel will take us deeper into these mysteries.

One thing is certain: God has a vision for our eternal life that far surpasses our earthly existence, even “a hundredfold” (Luke 8:8).

 

To Conclude This Season in a Word

We have arrived at the last two weeks of the first season in the Divine Calendar, and this week and the next repeat the same parable, but from different Gospels. The Holy Spirit seeks to capture our attention and highlight a key principle in the Kingdom of God. It can be summarized in one word. We will discover this word today and repeat it next week as well.

In the first two weeks, we saw the Kingdom of God in power—first through the announcement by John the Baptist, then through the arrival of the Heavenly King Himself. The following two weeks displayed the sad reality of the absence of the Kingdom of God in the lives of a man and a woman.

The previous four weeks led us on a gradual descent from the Kingdom toward its utter absence in death. We discovered four painful symptoms: inner paralysis, fruitless toil, inner blindness and muteness (which hinders our testimony and leads to despair), and the power of death. We can praise the Lord, because Jesus healed all these conditions—nothing was impossible for the power of His salvation.

In the concluding two weeks of this Season, the Holy Spirit wants to teach us the opposite journey: the ascent. What can we do if we find ourselves in one of these painful conditions? How do we avoid them? How can we prevent the void of God’s Kingdom from hindering our inner life, and how does the Kingdom extend within us, manifesting in our outer circumstances? This journey of ascent will be summarized in one word …

 

Our Journey Through the Divine Calendar

The Season of the Kingdom of God unfolds in four stages, and this is the distance we have traveled so far:

The Kingdom of God Declared in Power

Week 1: Building the Kingdom of God

Week 2: Recognizing Our Call to Repentance

The Absence of the Kingdom of God

Week 3: Zacchaeus and His Desire to See Jesus

Week 4: The Inner Vacuum and Mary’s Alabaster Flask

The Gradual Descent When We Lose the Vision of the Kingdom of God

Week 5: Healing the Paralytic and Our Inner Paralysis

Week 6: Jesus in the Boat and Fruitless Toil

Week 7: Repentance and Renewal — Moving from Despair to Hope

Week 8 (Last Week): The Kingdom of God and the Path to Overcome Death

The Ascent Toward Our Inheritance in the Kingdom of God (2 weeks)

This week and the next.

Let us turn to this week’s Sunday Gospel.

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Sunday Gospel for the Parable of the Sower — The Secret to Spiritual Growth: Luke 8:4–15 (NKJV)

And when a great multitude had gathered, and they had come to Him from every city, He spoke by a parable: 5 “A sower went out to sow his seed. And as he sowed, some fell by the wayside; and it was trampled down, and the birds of the air devoured it. 6 Some fell on rock; and as soon as it sprang up, it withered away because it lacked moisture. 7 And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprang up with it and choked it. 8 But others fell on good ground, sprang up, and yielded a crop a hundredfold.” When He had said these things He cried, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”

The Purpose of Parables

9 Then His disciples asked Him, saying, “What does this parable mean?”

10 And He said, “To you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to the rest it is given in parables, that ‘Seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.’

The Parable of the Sower Explained

11 “Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. 12 Those by the wayside are the ones who hear; then the devil comes and takes away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved. 13 But the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, who believe for a while and in time of temptation fall away. 14 Now the ones that fell among thorns are those who, when they have heard, go out and are choked with cares, riches, and pleasures of life, and bring no fruit to maturity.

15 But the ones that fell on the good ground are those who, having heard the word with a noble and good heart, keep it and bear fruit with patience.

 

A Teaching to a Disciple:Why Use a Parable?

In Luke 8:4–8, we read that Jesus taught “a great multitude [that] had gathered, and they had come to Him from every city.” He used a parable that all His listeners could relate to. Back then, farming was as universally familiar as the Internet is to us today—part of everyday life rather than a specialized skill. Jesus used a parable because, through natural imagery, the crowds could deduce spiritual truths according to their ability to comprehend.

We read in Luke 8:9–10 that Jesus explained why He used a different approach when teaching the masses compared to His inner circle of disciples (we will look more at this below).

And in Luke 8:11–15, Jesus teaches plainly “the mysteries of the kingdom of God” to His closest followers. He interprets what He hoped the masses would comprehend and gives His disciples the unveiled spiritual teaching about some mysteries in the Kingdom of God. We will examine this teaching below, as it displays the journey of ascent.

 

The Wise Sower of the Human Heart

Why does Jesus give different messages to different audiences? Is it because He does not want the crowds to understand what He reveals to His disciples? Verse 9–10 might sound that way, but that is not what Jesus is saying, nor does it reflect His character—“who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4).

Verses 10 states: “And He said, ‘To you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to the rest it is given in parables, that “Seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.”’”

Jesus taught the masses through parables—those who did not have the privilege of clinging to Him and receiving His spiritual light continuously, like the disciples—because if He had taught the spiritual mysteries plainly, the crowds might hear without truly understanding. “Seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand” was meant to prevent people from distancing themselves by thinking, Well, I don’t get this, so this can’t be for me.

Jesus is the wise Sower of truth in the human heart, and He always delivers tailored messages we can comprehend—so that seeing, we may see: “In Your light we see light” (Ps. 36:9b). And hearing, we may hear: “He who has ears to hear, let him hear!” (Luke 8:8).

 

The Parable of the Sower: The Ones Who Hear

In Luke 8:5, Jesus said to the multitudes: “A sower went out to sow his seed. And as he sowed, some fell by the wayside; and it was trampled down, and the birds of the air devoured it.” But in verses 11–12, He addressed the disciples: “Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. Those by the wayside are the ones who hear; then the devil comes and takes away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved.”

When we attend spiritual meetings or church services, read or pray in our private devotional time, or interact with the Holy Spirit in any other way, we receive spiritual seeds in the land of our soul. These seeds are the words of God—truths with conditions and promises. If we nurture the seed, protect its growth, and obey it, we meet the conditions for the promises. The word then grows to fruition.

We read in Luke 8:12: “Those by the wayside are the ones who hear …” Sometimes we engage in spiritual activities but only mingle as those who hear. We may be physically present—hearing or reading words—without truly listening. It is as if we are present with another agenda rather than actually receiving what is offered. These are the ones who hear. Then the birds of forgetfulness come and devour whatever truth may have landed in our soul. When we leave this spiritual time, we have already forgotten what it was about.

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The Parable of the Sower: When They Hear

In Luke 8:6, Jesus teaches the multitudes: “Some fell on rock; and as soon as it sprang up, it withered away because it lacked moisture.” And He teaches the disciples in verse 13: “But the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, who believe for a while and in time of temptation fall away.”

When we truly listen during a spiritual time—whether hearing a teacher, focusing on reading, or actively engaging in prayer and contemplation—we might receive the words of God with great joy. It becomes true, as verse 13 says: “when they hear, receive the word with joy.”

After passing the first challenge of listening and chasing away the birds of forgetfulness, our next challenge is to continue believing in times of temptation or contradictory experiences that seem to cancel the truth we so joyfully received in faith.

We overcome this second test of temptation or opposition through vigilance in watering the seed with prayer. By guarding the truth with regular prayer and believing in the promises, the seed will sprout, and the roots will grow. The deeper the roots grow, the more severe the drought of temptation and opposition they can withstand.

 

The Parable of the Sower: When They Have Heard

Jesus said to the multitudes in Luke 8:7: “And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprang up with it and choked it.” And in verse 14, He said to the disciples: “Now the ones that fell among thorns are those who, when they have heard, go out and are choked with cares, riches, and pleasures of life, and bring no fruit to maturity.”

Some time passes after we have truly listened and chased away the birds of forgetfulness. We have vigilantly watered the implanted word with prayer during challenging seasons. Then we become among those who have heard.

But a third and final challenge arises before the word, with its promise, bears mature fruit. A sudden entanglement related to our earthly life—“cares, riches, and pleasures of life”—tests our priorities for the growth of the seed.

When this earthly distraction wins the competition for our focus, thorns shoot up around the seed to choke it. Because we no longer gaze upon the face of Christ as we once did—whose “face shone like the sun” (Matt. 17:2)—the light of Jesus is blocked by the shadow of the rising thorns. Yet if we remain alert and discern what is happening while maintaining our priorities, we reach the blessed and promised ground.

 

The Parable of the Sower: The Noble and Good Heart

In Luke 8:8, Jesus says to the multitudes: “But others fell on good ground, sprang up, and yielded a crop a hundredfold.” And in verse 15, He speaks to the disciples: “But the ones that fell on the good ground are those who, having heard the word with a noble and good heart, keep it and bear fruit with patience.”

If we pass the three challenges of forgetfulness, opposing circumstances, and alluring priorities, the seed of truth finds good ground. Here it springs up and bears more fruit than we could have expected.

Jesus describes the good soil as a noble and good heart. Noble in Greek means “beautiful,” “valuable,” “virtuous,” “fair,” “honest,” and “worthy.” It is a heart that has passed the test, entrusted by God with the blessings of His promise. Good in Greek means “beneficial,” “well,” and “good.”

Now we return to the word that summarizes this entire journey of ascent—visualized by conquering the three challenges above—and we find it in the last part of the Sunday Gospel: “… keep it and bear fruit with patience” (Luke 8:15).

The word patience in Greek carries the meaning of “cheerful,” “hopeful,” “endurance,” “patient waiting,” and ultimately, “constancy.” Constancy—faithfulness and steadfastness—is the spiritual principle that encapsulates our journey and struggle to avoid the absence of God’s Kingdom and to expand Christ’s reign in our soul.

Constancy in our spiritual life always produces fruit. Let us seek the grace to remain steadfast through oppositions, periods of dryness, and other worldly or tempting distractions. By making constancy the key principle in our spiritual life (and physical life), we experience true progress and growth.

 

Wisdom from the Desert

The Desert Fathers would say that small amounts done consistently bring more fruit than great amounts done inconsistently.

This is the spiritual battle waged against us: to shake us out of blessed consistency and consecration. Therefore, it is important to cultivate a realistic and manageable spiritual life that we can sustain, fitting our lifestyle and calling. If we exhaust ourselves with sudden spiritual inspiration that we cannot maintain, it will not benefit us in the long run—this is the wisdom of the Spiritual Doctors of the Egyptian desert.

Soon, we will enter the second Season in the Divine Calendar. If we take only one lesson from these first ten weeks, let it be this: Let us be constant in our spiritual life. If we maintain this blessed faithfulness year after year, we will witness the expansion of the Kingdom of God within and around us.

“My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing” (James 1:2–4).

Concluding the Parable of the Sower — The Secret to Spiritual Growth

As always, it is a privilege for me that you have spent this time reading. I trust the Holy Spirit will help us, through the grace of these final two weeks of the Season of the Kingdom of God, to discover how we can establish this key principle of constancy in our daily walk with our Beloved, Jesus Christ.

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