Sunday of the 7th Ecumenical Council

 In today’s gospel reading we hear the Parable of the Sower from the Gospel of Luke. After Christ shares the parable with the disciples they asks the meaning behind the story, and before Christ explains he says:

“To you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, but to the rest it is given in parables, that ‘Seeing they may not see, And hearing they may not understand.” - Luke 8:10

Mysteries are not obscure intellectual concepts, but the presence of the Kingdom of God which cannot be defined. A person's unwillingness to understand Christ's parables is due to a rejection of His Kingdom.-Orthodox Study Bible

“If the blindness were natural, it would have been proper for God to open their eyes; but because it was a voluntary and self-chosen blindness, He does not overthrow their free will.” Doing so would have been not only to “no advantage for them, but an even greater condemnation.” -St. John Chrysostom’s Homily 45 on Matthew