by Fr. Brian Wirth,
Director of Rural Life
Vince Seiker, a former parishioner, died Jan. 4. He was the father of three priests of the Catholic Diocese of Lincoln: Father Mark, Msgr. Daniel and Father Leo Seiker. I would like share, as a tribute to Mr. Seiker and for all farmers, the reflection Msgr. Daniel Seiker gave at the rosary vigil.
“Pater meus agricula est.”
St. Jerome, the cantankerous saint, was commissioned by Pope Damasus I in 382 to translate the Scriptures from the original languages. The saint who famously said: “Nothing pleases God as much as obedience,” translated John’s Gospel and the words of Jesus at the Last Supper.
Jerome translated this passage: “agricula.” The Lectionary translation is “vine grower” “vine dresser;” “husbandman;” This word is used not just for those who tend vines, but also for farmers. Thus, in simple Nebraska small-town parlance: “My father is a farmer.”
I didn’t say was, but is.
Dad planted a garden and fields, many of them over the years. He wore a straw hat and had a shovel in his hand. He cared for the soil.
The husbandman/father, makes his field better by cultivating it. If you’re a farmer, you don’t go to work; work is all around you. Plant your seed in the morning and keep busy all afternoon, for you don’t know if profit will come from one activity or another.
It’s a hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops. Farming involves watching the weather and taking risks. Farmers are gamblers, but a legal kind of gambling. Ecclesiastes advises: “Farmers who wait for perfect weather never plant. If they watch every cloud, they never harvest.” And St. James: “Behold, the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient over it until it receives the early and the late rains.”
St. Augustine states: “God is a farmer. And if he abandons man, man becomes a desert. Man is also a farmer. If he leaves God, he turns himself into a desert.”
It might be surprising to hear that St. Augustine says that “we cultivate God, but the Latin word for worship is “culvare” which means “to cultivate.” Its participle, “cultus” comes from “culture” from which we get “cult” and “worship.”
At the Last Supper, Jesus uses the metaphor of the Vine to underscore His union with His disciples and their absolute dependency upon him for life and growth because the Vinedresser—the Father—seeks an abundant harvest. So he trims back the Vine and those who live in Jesus through suffering and hardship, to rid the Vine of fruitless branches—those who do not really believe—and to invigorate the other branches, his disciples, to become even more fruitful.
Our Lord also gives again the invitation to abide in him. He spoke of abiding in him in the Bread of Life Discourse. At the Last Supper, Jesus again invites us to abide in him. The Synoptics makes an explicit link between the fruit of the vine and the Eucharistic sacrifice.
From the beginning, Jesus associated his disciples with his own life, revealing the mystery of the Kingdom to them and gave them a share in his mission, joy, and sufferings. Jesus spoke of a still more intimate communion between him and those who would follow him: “Abide in me and I in you. I am the Vine; you are the branches.”
Jesus proclaims a mysterious and real communion between his own body and ours: “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him.” And he also promised eternal life to those who receive him worthily.
Aquinas refers to St. Augustine, explaining further: “God cultivates us to make us better by his work since he roots out the evil seeds in our hearts.” Augustine: “God opens our hearts with the plow of his words, plants the seeds of the commandments, and harvests the fruit of devotion.”
But we cultivate God not by plowing, but by adoring, so that we may be made better by him. If anyone is a worshiper—a cultivator of God—and does his will, God listens to him. Cultivating God or better, worshiping the Lord means cultivating a relationship with him by which we give him honor and we ourselves are cultivated to be more like him. The seeds of his life in us blossom into divine life.
So we are gathered to pray the Rosary for the happy repose of the soul of our dad and we are also challenged to respond to God’s cultivation of our souls by the master of prayer, St. Teresa of Avila, who said: “The beginner must think of himself as one setting out to make a garden in which the Lord is to take delight yet in soil most unfruitful and full of weeds, His Majesty uproots the weeds and will set good plans in their stead. God is the one who does the real farming and we cooperate with him.”
She adds: “As we grow in prayer, God directly waters the garden with his rain, taking the place of our little buckets that we try to use. If our soul is the field or garden, and we are meant to be fellow laborers, gardeners, and farmers with God, what does this mean in our life concretely?
It’s not coincidental that God the farmer, when he came into the world, was a “builder” usually translated as “carpenter,” though the Greek and Latin translate more general “father” or “tekton,” both of which mean something like a craftsman, an artisan.
God wants us to build and grow things interiorly and exteriorly in many ways. God is the only Creator, but has willed that we join in the work of creation by being stewards and those who seek to perfect creation by doing well our daily tasks by our family life. The Lord wants us to exercise our creativity and our work and take up the fruits of creation, imprinting our own personality on them. In exercising our mission of dominion over creation and in the creativity of our work, our art, and our daily life, we are imitating God the farmer.
