July 12, 2026
The Word always comes to our aid to make us more Christian, more human.
In the parable of the sower, we are told that part of the seed fell on rocky ground and since the soil had no depth…it withered. For the Word to bear fruit, it needs depth. On mere surface, the Word dries up.
Let us not doubt it: the greatest enemy of the person is not, as the old catechism used to say, the devil, the world, and the flesh. Our greatest enemy is superficiality. We approach everything without going deeper, and in doing so, we trivialize it, impoverish it, confuse it. Being superficial is very easy (it’s just “follow the crowd”), but it makes us vulnerable. Being deep is costly, but it strengthens us.
That is why, as some thinkers say, an urgent task for today’s person is to recover the dimension of depth. And we have known, since ancient times, how to do this: read something, pray something, not fear spending time in silence, contemplate nature, speak calmly with another person, attend a lecture, and so on.
Summer can be a time of superficiality or also a time of recovering depth. Let us read a book, take walks, speak with family and neighbors with nuance, have moments of silence in church or at home, pray with peace. If we deepen our understanding, we will more easily grasp the embrace that God gives to our lives.