.
as they go on their way
they are choked
by the worries and riches and pleasures of life
and do not reach maturity
Luke 8

It’s one of Jesus’ best known parables, the sower and the seed.

But we really need to extend the title to include the soil: the sower, the seed and the soil, since we know that Jesus the sower and the seed he sows are nothing less than the best, and the problem is in our reception of the life he offers.

Since yesterday when I recorded the Gospel passage for today’s Lectio Divina this call to maturity has stuck with me. It’s been a theme of much of my own prayer and many of my reflections and retreats in recent years since all of us at least some of the time do not recognise a struggle with some aspects of religious practice to be a call to and an opportunity for greater human (and therefore Christian) maturity.

While most people strive to continue growing physically, emotionally and intellectually, too many good people have picked up the idea that the goal of religious practice is to do nothing more than keep the rules and rituals of the religious practices they learnt as small children.

While blind adherence to the practices of religion might be enough for a child, as our teenage and adult lives become more complex and messy we rightly seek and need a more personal and robust engagement with life and (therefore) with God.

Those who live within childhood religious understandings and frameworks are of course destined for a happy eternity. The young man who came to Jesus seeking eternal life was following this path. (Mark 10). “What must I do to inherit eternal life” he asks.

But Jesus recognised in his zealous question his yearning for abundant life not only eternally but also here and now. Jesus gazed at him with love and invited him to consider that keeping the commandments from his youth might be an adequate existence but not enough for the abundant life which was the answer to the question he brought.

This young man had reached a turning point in human growth, the awareness that all that I can achieve by my own disciplined efforts is not enough to satisfy my desire. This awakening is an opportunity for movement into a deeper experience of faith, a life which can only be found in relationship with Jesus Christ who is God-with-us.

So yes, the “R” words, rules and rituals, are important, But it is relationship (the key R word) which is essential for those who embrace the journey of growing maturity of faith.

Thanks be to God this ultimate relationship with Jesus Christ, God-with-us, is available to every person in any and every moment.

In this intimate encounter with the divine the abundance of human life is lived.

All we need is the maturity to ask.