Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
As we hear this parable about the weeds sown amongst the wheat, I know I often think of the big scale. And, in fact, Jesus Himself uses this macro scale. The sower “is the Son of Man, the field is the world, the good seed the children of the kingdom. The weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels.” And this reality is very present to us. As we seek to live according to the Gospel, we also notice that others do not. But God is patient, and allows even evil to exist, because the work of removing the “weeds” could destroy the good crops as well.
But I would encourage us to shrink the parable a bit. Don’t look at it so much from the macro scale as from the micro scale. Because when we stay at the macro scale, it can be very easy to be self-righteous and to presume that we’re all the children of the kingdom simply by virtue of our baptism. But, unless you’re very different than I, we do not always live as children of the kingdom. Sometimes we live more like children of the evil one, choosing to sin when we know we should do good, and choosing to listen to the temptations rather than to our heavenly Father.
I would hazard a guess that most of us are a mixed-bag. We are not all good, but nor are we all bad. Our souls have good seed sown, by virtue of our baptism and the sacraments we receive, but we also allow weeds to grow in our souls by virtue of the times when we give in to temptation and do not do the good we know we should do, but instead do the evil we know we should not do.
Because of this, God demonstrates His great mercy in giving us time to pull up the weeds that exist in our souls little by little, rather than destroying the entire crop by spraying Round-Up. He sees the good that we desire, and suffers the evil that we do, hoping that, in time, He can harvest more fruit from good seed than weeds that will be thrown into the fire. God doesn’t approve of the evil, and certainly less so desires that it grow. But He also knows that the good that we do can sometimes be quite fragile, and if the weeds are withdrawn too aggressively, it may also take out what good we could accomplish.
Does this mean that we should continue in our sinful choices and actions, because God may let it slide anyway? Certainly not! God shows His patience so that we can have more opportunity to do good, not so that we can have more opportunity to sin. And, in fact, as any gardener will tell you, it is still good to try to make sure the weeds don’t overtake the good seed. But it has to be done carefully, often with painstakingly small successes, and the we often have to pull weeds from the same spot over and over again, because we have not pulled out the roots, but have only gotten the part of the weed that made its way above the ground level.
How do we pull weeds gently, to increase the room for the good seed to spread, without being so aggressive that we pull up the good and the bad? Part of it means being patient with ourselves, as God is patient with us. If we have a bad habit, whether it’s a major sin or a small sin, it will take time to uproot that habit. If we expect to stop it immediately, we are more often than not fooling ourselves. Do the little things each day to try to stop the habit. If you do it each day, try to reduce it to every other day. If you act on the bad habit each week, try to make it a week and a half, or two weeks.
Secondly, God’s grace is, for the weeds of our soul, better than Round-up. By opening ourselves up to God’s grace by frequent confession, reception of Holy Communion in a state of grace, and daily prayer, we make start pulling up those weeds one by one, and loosening the soil with the water of the Holy Spirit to soften the ground and make it more likely to succeed in getting not just the symptom but also the disease.
Thirdly, persevere. When you’re weeding a large flower bed, and the weeds have been allowed to take over a section or even the whole bed, it takes a while. Maybe start with the bigger weeds, the bigger sins, first, but then go back and start pulling up even the smaller weeds, because, if they are allowed to grow, they, too, will become big weeds. You may only progress through a few square inches of that flower bed, but at least you know that’s ready for the good seed to grow, and you can move on to the next section. Don’t be afraid that you’re not seeing great progress, as long as you are cooperating with God’s grace and making what progress you can.
I am a firm believer that God desires our salvation. He doesn’t want us to fail, and enjoys seeing us make what progress we can. Any success is due to His grace, accompanied by our cooperation. If we keep striving to do the will of God, God will bless that effort, and will help us find success. Yes, the world is a mixture of weeds and wheat. But so is our soul. Before condemning the world, start weeding out the parts of your life that need conversion. It may be slow work, but it will also help the wheat grow even more, as we witness to the power of God’s grace in our lives.
