Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Probably each of us has been on the receiving or the giving end of the question, “Are we there yet?” If we’re on the receiving end of that question, maybe we responded with some form of, “No; and if I hear that question one more time…” Especially as kids, we may not always have a lot of patience, but even as adults patience can be difficult. It never seems to fail; whenever I’m in a rush, I always seem to end up behind a person who wants to drive 5 mph lower than the speed limit without a safe way to pass, or I manage to hit every red light.
Whether we’re young or more advanced in age, we can also struggle with being patient with the world. We see so many bad things that happen, so often to good people, and we get impatient. We wonder why these bad things are allowed to happen. Maybe we even get impatient with God as we get upset that someone we know and love goes through a difficult time and the person causing them a difficult time seems to have everything going right for them.
Things were not much different 2,000 years ago when Jesus preached in Palestine. He tells this familiar parable about a farmer planting good seed, but an enemy going through the field and planting weeds that start to come up with the wheat. Those working the fields ask if they should pull the weeds, but the sower tells them not to, lest the wheat get pulled up prematurely as the weeds are pulled up.
It is not a surprise to us that good and evil are so often intertwined with each other. We may like this good trait of that particular person, but dislike the bad trait of the same person. Maybe we see a good thing happening, but then it leads to someone else suffering. Our world seems to be one large, mixed field of weeds and wheat. And that may frustrate us to no end. We just want the pure good, we want evil to be defeated and eliminated from the earth.
That desire is good. It shows that we have a desire for heaven. In the Book of Revelation, the cry of the martyrs under the throne of God is how long will God allow the evil to continue and His servants to suffer? But God is more patient than we are, and His patience is meant to allow for conversion, for a change of heart and life. God’s forgiveness is there to give time, as long as the person still lives, to turn away from evil and turn toward God.
Because it’s not just the world that is a mixed bag; it’s not just the outside world that is weeds sown amongst wheat. Our own hearts are the same way. There are parts of us that seek to do God’s will, that are full of His grace and love. There are also parts of us that prefer our own will, that are full of wickedness. It can be very easy to demand the justice of God, that evil be finally vanquished. But if we look into our hearts, how much of us would be destroyed if God were not patient with us, if God exacted His justice upon us rather than His mercy. I know I would be in trouble.
It is easy to think that the Church herself is a place for good people. And in one sense, the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, is untrained by sin, because Jesus is untainted by sin. But, in a different sense, the Church on earth in her members, is what St. Augustine of Hippo calls a corpus permixtum, a mixed body which has both saint and sinner. The Church on earth is not simply for the righteous, but is also for sinners. Pope Francis used the image of the Church as a field hospital that goes out to treat the mortally wounded. We might extend that analogy to also say that in a field hospital, some are wounded in minor ways from the ricochet of shrapnel, while others have missing limbs and life-threatening injuries. That is who we are as a Church. Some of us are more injured than others, but we all suffer from the wounds of sin. And if we don’t know that, if we think that we’re good, then we no longer need a Savior. And if we don’t need a Savior, then we don’t need Jesus. And if we don’t need Jesus, then we are the most pitiable people of all, and heaven is not the place for us.
Now, all analogies limp, and even as Jesus talks about the weeds and the wheat, and even as our hearts are fields mixed with weeds and wheat, it doesn’t mean we let the weeds go. We cannot simply ignore our sin because God is merciful and patient with us. We need to ask ourselves how the weeds got in our fields, and try to make sure they don’t get there again. In reality, each morning of our life is the time for sewing seed, and each evening of our life is the time for harvesting. Every day we can ask ourselves what good we did, and thank God for that. Every day we can ask ourselves what evil we did, big or small, and ask God to forgive us, and help us to avoid those sins tomorrow. It is especially effective if we confess those evils in the Sacrament of Penance, aka confession, because we receive the very life of God in order to help prevent the weeds from being sewn in our hearts.
We may struggle with patience, especially when it involves someone else suffering evil. But if we are impatient with others, then we should ask if God should be that impatient with us, or if we’d rather receive His mercy and give us time to turn back to Him. And if we want God to do that with us, so we should do with others.
