Deep Soil Evangelization

A lesson from a Russian farm

Yesterday, I attended a Beacons of Light event with Archbishop Robert Casey. He shared his vocation story and then spent the rest of the time fielding questions. His answers resonated with my experience. The archbishop emphasized the cultural shift from a Christendom culture to a new apostolic age (à la Msgr. Shea and companions), the need to overcome a crippling parochialism by leaning into our common Catholicism (i.e., remember that you’re a Catholic before you’re a member of x parish), a relational approach to mission, and so forth. For me, there was a lot of confirmation that I’m going in the right direction — at least one that’s aligned with the local ordinary.

One point, and it was one he emphasized multiple times, was the need to avoid shallow evangelization attempts, efforts simply in place to drive numbers, and offerings that simply perpetuate “the way things have always been done.” He said these efforts have been good in the past, but in a new apostolic moment, they need renewal. He focused on what what he calls “deep soil evangelization.” For Archbishop Casey, this means a patient approach to evangelization, recognizing that sowing the seed of the Gospel takes time. It means working the soil, preparing hearts. It means we’re in it for the long haul and not settling for quick wins. We need to see beyond immediate successes and realize that we may never see the fruits of the work we are doing in our lifetime, but our grandchildren might.

The archbishop’s emphasis on deep soil evangelization called to mind a story I read in Catherine Doherty’s Apostolic Farming. Doherty (1896–1985) was a Russian-born Catholic activist who founded the Madonna House Apostolate. She grew up on an 800 acre, pre-industrialized farm in Russia. The approach to farming was truly natural, not machinated. The focus wasn’t on scale and efficiency as our modern approach is. She relates a story of the hired farm superintendent speaking with her father about a field that was dying. You’d think he was talking about a living creature, and in some ways, he was. This story completely blew my mind and I had to put the book down for a while. It is so antithetical to today’s way of life that’s so focused on industry and immediacy. Here it is:

The Earth Never Hurries
I recall the [superintendent] discussing with my father another field that he said was dying. Sleep, he said, would not restore that field. It had to be healed lovingly and patiently. He spoke of trees as the remedy. They decided on a mixture of evergreens and deciduous trees. Planting only evergreen trees would make the soil sour; leaves from deciduous trees were needed to feed the earth over long years.
I asked my father why he was giving so much acreage to trees which grew very slowly. "The earth never hurries," he said, "and if a man makes her ill he has to apologize to her, beg her forgiveness, and start all over again to make her well and fruitful. Sometimes it takes four generations to restore the soil that has been hurt by one generation." Father told me that once upon a time a large part of our land had been very sick. My great-great grandfather decided that the only way to restore it to health was to plant it with trees, and this he did. He left instructions for his great-grandson (my grandfather) to cut down the trees and plow the land when the latter's son (my father) would turn six years old. Father remembered men cutting down those mighty trees and plowing the earth. It was black again and rich and full of life. It was, in my day, our most fertile piece of earth.

I mean, this is almost unfathomable. Counterintuitive. At least for us. We just pump the earth with more chemicals and abuse it. But, the emphasis on relationality, the appreciation for creation, the offer of repentance, the trust, the patience, the therapy. The awareness that the fruit of work will not be seen in one’s own lifetime, but will benefit someone four generations away. This is deep soil farming. And, it may shine some light on how we can think about deep soil evangelization.