From the’Editorial on Il Ticino November 22, 2024
by Don Giovanni Iacono, Rector of the Episcopal Seminary of Pavia
«Under the snow, bread». So says an ancient adage, fruit of peasant experience and of an ancient wisdom that finds confirmation in revealed Wisdom, when Isaiah, writing about the effectiveness of the Word of God, uses the image of rain and snow who do not return to heaven without first fertilizing and making the earth sprout «so that it may give seed to the sower and the bread to those who eat» (Is 55.10). And that amazement arises which strikes Pietro Spina – the protagonist of Ignazio Silone's novel, The seed under the snow – when he exclaims: «What a thrilling event it was for me one morning to discover, in that clod of earth, a sprouting grain of wheat… Ah, my whole being, my whole soul, suddenly gathered around that little seed.».
Winter is the first season of the year. The life that blossoms in spring is actually born in winter: beneath the frost and snow there is no death, no stagnation, but a life that teems and prepares to explode, yearning to be born. The farmer knows this, and for this reason blesses the snow that, settling on the fields sown in autumn, protects and germinates the seeds, like the housewife's blanket covering the leavened bread. It is therefore a time of waiting, of life, and of hope: the time of snow.
Can there be teeming life, however, even under the blanket of the many «winters» that chill this era? I couldn't say exactly, but the Jubilee now upon us, which requires us all pilgrims of hope, perhaps leads us to this act of faith. The image of a shoot pushing through the snow, seeking the sun's rays, is the image chosen for this year's seminary, echoing the theme suggested by Pope Francis for the last World Day of Prayer for Vocations, «Called to sow hope."».
Precisely as we go through the vocational winter that seems to be hitting our Churches, at least in the West, we are called to play at a loss, to continue to throw seeds of evangelical hope precisely on the furrows of apparently parched lands, knowing that the kingdom of God is already present which is «like a man who throws seed on the ground; whether he sleeps or rises, night or day, the seed sprouts and grows. How, he himself does not know» (Mc 4,26-27).
This is the experience that renews itself every weekend for me, as, for over a year now, I, along with Alessandro, Giacomo, and Luca, have been blessed with the opportunity to visit a different parish and oratory in the Diocese: open and welcoming places where children, teenagers, and young people find priests, nuns, educators, and volunteers who, without making headlines or becoming discouraged, till the soil of lives often marked by the toils of today's family and youth landscape, to sow seeds for the future. And how many sprouts of hope we see, right in the middle of the snow!
So let's learn to recognise the preciousness of this time in our lives. It's a time of sowing against the wind, spent studying for the most challenging exam, training for the decisive race, sacrificing ourselves to care for a sick family member, investing time and resources in a volunteer organisation, pursuing educational or personal growth programmes. And we know well that those who sow sparingly, will reap sparingly: let's not tire of sowing generously, and, faced with our storms of mistrust, let's not give up casting our seed. seeds of hope!
«Let us not tire of working – writes Augustine of Hippo in Speech 358 – we sow amid tears… In winter, we sow with difficulty. But the harshness of winter has never deterred the farmer from throwing the fruit selected with such difficulty into the earth. He does not stop, he throws it into the earth, shivering with cold, but eagerly. Why eager despite the cold? Faith and hope shake off his laziness. He certainly does not see the harvest, but he has faith that it will sprout. He does not gather the fruits now, but hopes to gather them; and he is revived by this faith, by this hope, so that, enduring the great discomfort of the cold, he throws the seed into the earth and is certain that, with God's help, he can reap abundant fruits according to his work and his toil. So it is with every vocation: like that mustard seed, the smallest of seeds, apparently insignificant, but as »useless« as a grain of wheat which, together with so many others, gives us our daily Bread, or like an embrace or a caress that make a relationship of love flourish and nourish.
And so we dream of expanses of snow that prepare fields of golden wheat for the harvest, with the eyes of those who, after the time of sowing and snow, return with joy carrying their sheaves! Let us not tire of sow and of dream with a prophetic gaze, because – as Kahlil Gibran writes in his The Prophet – «As seeds dream beneath the snow, your heart dreams of spring. Trust your dreams, for within them lies the gateway to eternity.».
