Pope Leo XIV’s first General Audience on Wednesday was a meditation on Matthew’s Parable of the Sower (13:1-23). It’s the first of five parables or analogies that Jesus makes about the nature of the Kingdom of Heaven. They will be read in succession over several Sundays in summer 2026, when the Church will use Matthew’s Gospel for the Sunday Lectionary.

The Parable of the Sower showcases his work and the fate of the seeds. The Sower goes out to sow his field with seed. Some falls on rocks and dies for lack of roots and moisture. Some lands amid weeds and brambles that choke it off. Some never get to germinate because the birds eat them. Some falls on good soil but, even there, different seeds produce different yields, more or less bountiful. Jesus uses the parable to explain God’s action in spreading his Word and different human reactions to it.

The Pope uses the parable to meditate on the Sower’s actions. How is it that he is so willy-nilly, so scattershot in his sowing? Shouldn’t he be a better steward of the grain in terms of seeing where he sows it?

Leo disagrees. The Sower is God and his scattering of the seed represents his munificence and liberality. God’s love generously gives out life. But, like life, we are called to love him amid all sorts of conditions, to turn our rocky hearts into natural ones, to sink deep despite obstacles, to resist the suffocation of secularism, to aim at producing 100 rather than thirty-fold. The mystery is — unlike the seeds — with God’s grace we can do it. God promises us neither a rose garden nor black topsoil, but his grace invites us to transform those conditions into a garden full of peace roses and nourishing wheat from the good earth.

The Pope also did something we’ve been trying to do here at the Register for nigh on four years: connect Scripture, Catholic life, and art. He did so by meditating on Vincent Van Gogh’s painting, “The Sower at Sunset.” As he does not specify which version (Van Gogh had several) I chose the 1888 painting.

There are some artists whose work is sui generis: you look at it and say, “That is X.” Like El Greco. Or Van Gogh. The style and color palette (blue/gold) of this painting is strictly Van Gogh’s, including his use of lines to construct the scene (including the sower). Blue and gold fit here theologically well — the blue of hope yields the gold of glory.

If we look closer, however, we might draw some unusual theological conclusions from this work. They call it the “Sower at Sunset.” Honestly, that’s a strange time to sow. A sower sets out in the morning, as the sun comes up, so that he has the time of a workday ahead of him, not one where he has to beat dusk. He wants the rising sun to warm his seed, not the cold night air to chill them. Sure, the herbivorous birds of the daytime might attack them, but he can see and scare them. That’s a better deal than herbivorous rodents (like field mice) with bigger appetites at night.

Van Gogh is said to have been inspired by Jean-François Millet, who also painted “The Sower” in 1850. Millet’s work employs a darker pallet than Van Gogh’s and, arguably, is not necessarily even connected to the Biblical parable (as, strictu sensu, one could also say of Van Gogh). Yes, Millet painted agricultural scenes, but the farmlands of France could hardly be disconnected from the Catholicism of the Church’s Eldest Daughter: it’s why a more famous Millet painting is “The Angelus,” depicting farmworkers at prayer at dusk.

Sowers (not necessarily Biblical ones) were a popular subject of painters in the second half of the XIX century, e.g., like Millet, we find a sower in Pissarro. Van Gogh himself returned to the sower image in multiple paintings. See here, here, here and here. He even produced variants of his “Sower and Setting Sun” (the Pope does not specify which he had in mind). See here, here and here. This version includes a tree, which at first looks barren but does have blossoms: it may only be because it’s early spring.

Attributing Van Gogh’s work to the Parable, however, the Pope made two observations. First, even though he’s sowing, there’s a whole field of mature grain behind him. Pope Leo says “We’re not sure how [it has grown up,] but it has.” I’d explain it by invoking John 4:34-37: explaining his encounter with the Samaritan Woman to the Apostles, Jesus observes:

Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true.

For God, all things are now: unlike us, God is not waiting to see how history unfolds. And it is God who is the ultimate cause of everything, especially the harvest. We are the hired hands, but sower and reaper “gather a crop for eternal life.”

The Pope’s other observation was about positions in Van Gogh’s painting. The sower is not central; the sun is. Compare that to Millet, whose sower is the focus and even appears to have been on steroids during the winter. The Pope makes clear that God — the Son — is the cause and principle of the harvest, he whose Word it is and whose grace leads men in collaboration with their free works to a rich harvest. His life-giving warmth has already yielded a harvest and blesses the somewhat fractured land the sower is sowing. (Couldn’t the sower have gotten the plowman through that field one more time?)

The Holy Father and Van Gogh both remind us to let God take the lead. If we do, a horn of plenty awaits because the prodigal Sower, “rich in mercy” (Ephesians 2:4), wants a cornucopia.