The Word that grows with us
The Gospel tells us to listen carefully to God’s word because it is alive and transformative. Like poetry, it shapes our hearts and minds, but Scripture goes even further, offering us God’s vision for our lives. Let’s allow it to grow in us and carry it with us every day.
Readings: Mark 4:21-25
The following homily was preached to the student brothers during Compline. You can listen here or read below:
Last week, I went to watch the new brilliant biopic about Bob Dylan. After the show, it got me thinking: why has this artist captivated so many followers for decades? And then I realised that this question is not so different from asking why we still read Shakespeare, Dante or Vergil after centuries. After all, Dylan received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016 for creating, as the committee said, “new poetic expressions”.
The point is that human words — especially in poetic form — can speak to something deep in us. All great poetry helps us make sense of life. Poems name what we are feeling, bring us comfort in struggles, and sometimes challenge us to live differently.
But if human words have this power, how much more can God’s word transform us? Scripture is not just inspiring—it it inspired; it is inspired by God and so it is alive. It does not just describe reality; it creates and transforms it. When we listen to it, it is not just our ears that are involved but our whole selves.
And we see this in today’s Gospel when Jesus tells us: “Pay attention to what you hear”. A more literal translation might be: “Watch what you hear”. That is an unusual way to speak about listening, but it points to the depth of God’s word, which is not just something we hear and forget, flatus vocis, passing words; it is something that carries God’s vision for our lives, a vision which is offered to us and that we can gaze on in gratitude and wonder.
St. Gregory the Great said something beautiful about Scripture: “Scriptura crescit cum legente”. “Scripture grows with the one who reads it”. Yes, because as we grow in faith, the same passage of Scripture can take on deeper and deeper meaning. God’s word meets us where we are, but it always invites us to go further.
This growth requires two things: God’s free gift first, and then our desire to receive it. St. John Chrysostom says that the “having” that Jesus mentions in the Gospel — “to the one who has, more will be given” — is this very “desire and wish to hear” God’s word. And when we welcome it, it grows within us and transforms us from the inside out.
Now, how can we make this happen without becoming monks in the desert? It does not have to be complicated. You might want to become a Dominican for instance… Or perhaps we can recover the simple practice of meditating on Scripture, as we were invited to do a few days ago on the Sunday of the Word of God. You may take just one verse each day — a line from the Gospel you can listen on your way to work or find on an app on your smartphone — and carry it with you. Let it shape your thoughts, your actions, and your prayer.
The Italian writer Italo Calvino once said that it is good to learn many poems by heart at any age because they keep us company. If that is true for poetry, how much more for Scripture! When we memorize even small parts of God’s word, it becomes a companion, a treasure always at hand.
So, let’s take Jesus’s word seriously. Pay attention. Gaze on it. May it grow in us and transform us. And may it be our lifelong companion, for the word of the Lord is a lamp to our feet, and a light to our path (cf. Psalm 119:105).
