Zeal and Patience

Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    For priests in the Diocese of Lansing, 1 July (or around there) is a special day.  It’s new pastor assignment day, meaning that priests who are moving into a new parish (whether as the first pastor assignment or from a transfer of assignments) usually start on or around that day.  As with any change, it can be stressful, both on the priest and on the people. What is the priest like?  What are the people like?  What is the staff like?  Social media has added a new dimension to the whole process, as future parishioners can “Facebook stalk” their new priest and see what they can learn from his pictures and posts.

After the Easter Vigil at my first pastorate in Adrian

    One of the many questions when a parish receives a new priest is how much he will change.  From a priest’s perspective, the question is how much he feels he needs to change, and when to make those changes.  From the people’s perspective, the question is basically the same, but perhaps with a bit more trepidation.  And different priests will give different advice on how fast a new priest should move on changes.  On the one hand, some priests say don’t change anything for the first year.  On the other hand, people often are prepared for some things to change when getting a new priest, so it may be easier to make changes right at the beginning, rather than waiting to change.  And, of course, it depends on what the new priest wants to change, and if it is a sacred cow to parishioners.
    Stereotypically, young priests in their new pastorate want to change a lot, and they often want to move quickly.  They may have good reasons and good intentions.  But, having been a pastor a few times, my advice is to move slowly on changing things that can wait, and only change things quickly that are of the utmost importance, though I will admit I’m not sure I’ve always followed my own advice in the past.  And we hear that general theme of patience in the Gospel today, though not precisely aimed at new pastors.  
    Christ again and again urges patience.  Whether it’s weeds growing among the wheat, or the growth of the mustard seed, or the rising of dough from yeast, all these require patience.  The master allows the weeds to grow so as not to harm the wheat.  The mustard seed starts small but grows large, as long as one has patience to let it grow.  The yeast mixed in the dough rises, but you have to wait over night or throughout the day.  As I have become known as the “Bourbon Priest,” I will admit that I associate yeast more with distilling than baking, but that’s just me.
    Impatience leads to problems.  I’m a fan of pita bread, but if you want sourdough bread, you can’t rush things without ruining the batch.  You can’t rush a tree growing.  And if you pull up the weeds too early, it might destroy your crop, and then you have nothing to show for all your work.  But, of course, the main point is not agriculture; it’s souls.
    Haste makes waste.  Too much zeal, especially if applied without patience, can turn people off from the Gospel.  Patience allows others to develop their faith, even if certain corrections are required from time to time.  Zeal is a good thing, as it drives us to seek the truth and help others live that truth.  But when zeal is misapplied, it can destroy progress made.  Now, perhaps we are sometimes too patient with others and give too much time, but we shouldn’t go from one extreme to the other.  Virtue stands in the middle.  Not too much, not too little.  Like Goldilocks, we need just the right amount of zeal and patience.
    And while we often think about zeal and patience with others, which is good, we should also exhibit both zeal and patience with ourselves.  Do we push ourselves to be more open to God’s grace and follow His teachings?  But do we also allow for the fact that we won’t do so perfectly?  So often we go to extremes with others but also with ourselves.  We might be overzealous and expect unrealistic change or growth in our spiritual life in a short period of time.  We have conversion of mind and commit ourselves to living in the truth, or encouraging others to live in the truth, but then when we fall short, as we often do when it comes to change and lofty goals, we crash and give up.  Or, we might be over-patient and figure that Christ is so merciful and understanding that we don’t really need to worry about the fact that we keep falling into the same sins and vices and never seem to make any progress.  In reality, Christ calls us to set lofty goals for our spiritual life, and to seek His grace to get us there, but to be patient if we don’t reach that goal perfectly.  

    [This is certainly true for you, my dear Catechumens.  You have experienced a call from Christ to follow Him.  You have recognized the parts of your life that need to change to be configured to Christ.  But perhaps you have also experienced some discouragement because you’re not there yet.  That’s ok.  Don’t slack, but don’t give up, either.  There’s a reason why we ask you to wait around a year before we baptize you.  We want you to know what you are doing, and to be able to commit to the new life of a disciple, rather than rushing in with too much zeal, and then backing out after baptism because you changed your mind or don’t feel like you can live the Gospel.  God calls you to deepen your relationship with Him, but He is patient with you as you walk away from your sinful past and walk towards holiness with God.]
    Zeal is good.  So is patience.  Both are necessary for real and long-lasting spiritual growth.  Don’t be too zealous and turn others or yourself away from slow, but real change and growth.  Don’t be too lazy and miss out on real changes and growth that will help you be a better disciple.  Be zealously patient with others and with yourself.

Thinking Smaller

Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    Perspective can change a lot.  There’s a comedic movie from 1989 called “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids,” where a scientist shrinks his kids (didn’t see that coming from the title, did you?) and two neighbor kids.  Small little crumbs of food become huge smorgasbords of sustenance.  Puny ants become both a large mode of transportation as well as elephant-like enemies.  Drops from the sprinkler go from small globs of refreshment to gigantic showers of death.  What once was small and insignificant, is now a matter of life and death.
    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.  

Being Patient with God and Ourselves

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.