The Parable of the "Wood Wide Web"

S

ince we are in the Season of Creation, my first point is about the trees. Did you know that trees communicate beneath the ground through their root systems, linked by what scientists call a mycorrhizal network? German forester Peter Wohlleben calls this hidden system the “wood wide web.” Through it, trees share water, nitrogen, carbon, and other nutrients, supporting one another with life-giving resources—even when they gain no direct benefit themselves. Even more striking, when a tree nears the end of its life, especially from old age, it releases its remaining strength to nourish the trees around it. In this way, life continues to flourish. Even trees speak of sacrifice or altruism.

For my second point let me talk about the Korean martyrs. For centuries, Korea was closed to all outside influence, and missionaries were forbidden entry. Yet, through annual embassies to Peking, a small group of laymen discovered Christian books and were converted. The first known baptism was that of Ni-Seoung-Houn (Peter) in 1784. Soon after, Paul Youn and James Kouen became the first martyrs in 1791 for refusing to perform pagan rites.

Over the next century, more than 10,000 Korean Christians were cruelly executed. For much of this period, the Church survived without priests, entirely sustained by laypeople. When a Chinese priest finally entered Korea in 1794, he found 4,000 Catholics who had never seen a priest. He was martyred within a few years. Later, missionaries from the Paris Foreign Mission Society arrived, only to meet the same fate. Andrew Kim Taegǒn, the first Korean priest trained in Macao, returned in 1845 and was executed the following year, along with his father and the lay apostle Paul Chong Hasang. Another wave of persecutions in 1866 claimed countless more lives.

Today, the Church honors 103 Korean martyrs—men and women, young and old, married and single, even children. As Pope St John Paul II said at their canonization in 1984:

The Korean Church is unique because it was founded entirely by laypeople. This fledgling Church, so young and yet so strong in faith, withstood wave after wave of fierce persecution. Thus, in less than a century, it could boast of 10,000 martyrs. The death of these many martyrs became the leaven of the Church and led to today’s splendid flowering of the Church in Korea. Even today their undying spirit sustains the Christians of the Church of Silence in the north of this tragically divided land.

Third and final point is about the parable of the sower. Just from the title alone, it tells us that it is primarily about the sower and secondarily about the soils.

The parable of the sower is God's work first not ours. St Andrew Kim Taegǒn wrote, "The Lord is like a farmer and we are the field of rice that he fertilizes with his grace and by the mystery of the incarnation and the redemption irrigates with his blood, in order that we will grow and reach maturity."

The saint's words can be consoling to those of us who think we are not the good soil. We think we are hopeless for not turning into good soil. We are reminded that to be good soil is the farmer's or the gardener's work. We cannot make ourselves into good soil, it is the work of God's grace. Sometimes we need to become rocky ground first. As St Augustine once observed, at different times in our lives we may resemble each type of soil: sometimes hardened by routine, sometimes shallow and unable to hold what we receive, sometimes choked by anxieties.

That means we must be patient as the divine gardener is so patient with us. If at first glance you feel you are not bearing fruit, the first tempatation is to despair. This was the astonishing case of Korea: though the soil seemed rocky and inhospitable, beneath the surface there was a hidden network, invisible to many, like the roots of trees communicating underground. Thousands of believers did not fall into that tempatation. They gave their lives, and their sacrifice became nourishment for generations. Their courage spread unseen, like an underground network, life-giving and enduring, strengthening the Church not only in their time but also in ours. Amen. Fr JM Manzano SJ