God sows the seeds of His word, which is why bearing the fruit of God's word requires work and preparation, according to the July 12 Gospel Meditation from Miami's Mother of Christ Catholic Church and School. 

"Using the best seeds doesn’t always guarantee the best plants," Rev. Fr. Jorge Arturo Carvajal-Niño wrote in the weekly church bulletin. 

Having the best seeds doesn't necessarily guarantee the best fruit to grow, he said. Seeds can be capable of growing the best fruit, but they cannot do so on their own; just like a person cannot expect to "have good fruit magically grow" by being a bystander.

Fr. Jorge Arturo Carvajal-Niño | https://www.motherofchrist.net/

Carvajal-Niño explained this with a personal anecdote. 

"An older Italian gentleman straight from Italy gave me these amazing tomato seeds that he claimed produced the best tomatoes ever grown" Carvajal-Niño wrote. "Without doubt, the fruit he shared with me was a testament to that fact. These tomatoes were amazing! I couldn’t wait until the next growing season to plant these seeds and harvest my own tomatoes."

But the tomatoes were a failure the following year. How could the tomatoes, that came from the same seeds, be amazing one year and terrible the next? 

"The problem wasn’t the seeds, it was the soil," Carvajal-Niño wrote. 

Without the right soil, tending and caring, the seeds won't be able to flourish, much like the soil of our lives. 

"Bearing the good fruit of God’s word requires preparation and work," he wrote. "We have to cultivate the soil of our lives so that those seeds can find a proper home. This one thing alone takes a great deal of patience, time and effort. What kind of preparation have we put into our lives so that we can be a recipient of God’s seed? It takes a great deal of soul-searching and ego-checking to properly prepare."

But God is a great sower and tends fruit to make it flourish again and again, each year. 

"If we have created a suitable bed for sowing, then once the seed is sown, we must properly maintain them," Carvajal-Niño said in the Gospel Meditation. "We need not only a source of water but a watering schedule. We need to weed, aerate the soil, nurture the young plants, protect them and provide proper nutrients. What does our spiritual maintenance plan look like? If we have done all things well, imagine what the seeds of God’s word could produce in us!"