Tares, Not Just Weeds

Resumed Fifth Sunday after Epiphany
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Words matter.  The right words can convey more details than the wrong words, which can lack the force or complexity of an idea.  For example, the classic response to the parental question, “How was school today?” often gets answered, “Good,” or “Fine.”  When, in fact, the seemingly stuporous teenager may have had numerous exciting, humiliating, depressing, or enjoyable moments.  But all mom or dad gets is, “Good.”  Or a person who is a novice when it comes to bourbon, when asked, “What do you smell when you nose the bourbon?” may respond, honestly enough, “Bourbon.”  But a person who had learned to carefully investigate the aromas might respond, “oak, caramel, hints of citrus, allspice,” or other scents.  

Darnel

    I bring this up because today’s parable is often called the parable of the weeds among the wheat.  But the Greek word, which Latin simply transliterates, is 𝜁𝜄𝜁𝛼𝜈𝜄𝛼, which refers to darnel, a poisonous weed that, when it first starts to grow, looks exactly like wheat.  Yes, one can get part of the message of the parable if one hears that there are weeds growing among the wheat, which cannot be pulled without possibly killing the wheat.  But the depth of the parable increases greatly when one considers that the two plants are, from sight, nearly indistinguishable, though one is poisonous.  We used to utilize the word, “tare,” which is a type of darnel, but probably someone decided that no one knew what tares were, and so decided to change the translation simply to weeds and let preachers, like me, explain the complexity of the parable.
    So, as we hear this parable, one of the points simply from the text is that good and bad can sometimes seem indistinguishable.  Our Lord explains the parable seven verses later, telling the disciples:
 

He who sows good seed is the Son of Man, the field is the world, the good seed the children of the kingdom.  The tares [my translation] 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.  Just as weeds are collected and burned [up] with fire, so will it be at the end of the age.  The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all who cause others to sin and all evildoers.  They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.  Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.

The mature darnel or tares looks very different than wheat, and then the harvesters keep the good wheat and burn up the tares, which can now be distinguished for the harm they would cause if consumed.  

    How often does evil disguise itself as good.  We might see this in a simple way again with speech.  We know that we should not speak uncharitably about another person, and though we want to say, “that boy is as dumb as a box of rocks,” we don’t want to get in trouble or offend.  So we might say, “Bless his heart.”  We mean the first thing, we just don’t want to get caught saying it out loud.  Or a person might quote saints or Scripture to try to support their bad actions or bad understanding of God’s will.  Even the devil quoted Scripture, but he did so without trying to communicate the grace that the Scriptures are meant to convey.
    But, of course, it can have weightier applications as well.  All too often what looks good ends up showing the evil contained therein.  And part of this lies in the fact that any good action has three parts: the act itself; the intention; and the circumstances.  And all three have to be good in order for us to consider an act morally good.  We can tell when an act is intrinsically evil, like abortion, euthanasia, stealing, misuse of our sexual faculties, just to name a few.  We don’t have to go any further than that in our moral evaluation.  But so many actions are morally good or morally neutral.  Let’s use the example of driving a car.  The action itself is morally neutral.  But the circumstances can change that action dramatically: let’s say the car is not yours and you don’t have permission to use it.  That changes a neutral act to a morally bad act, even though, from afar, it looks the same.  Or the intention can change the moral act, too.  Let’s say you’re driving a car (neutral), you own the car (neutral), and you are driving the car to get groceries for dinner so that your family can eat (good).  The entire act is good.  But if you change even just the intention, say, driving the car so that you friends who just robbed a bank can get away, that changes the entire moral act to bad, even though the action and the circumstances were neutral.
    Or, people often think that if you have good intentions, that’s all that matters.  But, as the cliché phrase goes, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”  You cannot achieve good by doing evil.  It’s like trying to get to Detroit driving north on I-75.  It’s not gonna happen.  When evil enters into an act, no matter what good goal you want to reach, it taints the entire act, just like a drop of bleach can ruin an entire glass of pure, pristine water.  
    What do we do, if evil is sometimes so hard to distinguish from good?  We strive to do good ourselves, with good intentions, and under good or neutral circumstances.  We strive to accept the good seed that God wants to sow by His grace, and keep away from cross-germination with tares.  We choose to do the right thing for the right reasons, no matter what others do, or what it might cost us.  
    Whether we use the word weed, or tares, or darnel, Christ reminds us today that evil can often disguise itself as good.  Stay close to Christ and His angels, who know the difference between good and evil.  Choose to do good for good reasons.  And, by the grace of God and with His mercy and patience, we will be found righteous and “shine like the sun in the kingdom of” the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.   

Do You Pray to God with that Mouth?

 Fifth Sunday after Easter
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  “Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?”  This is a phrase that is sometimes used when someone uses crude or vulgar language, a colloquial way of telling the person to start using better language.  St. James talks about our speech in the Epistle.  He reminds us that, “if anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue…his religion is in vain.”  That’s pretty strong language about mere words.  But mere words have meaning, they carry strength.

St. James the Lesser from St. John Lateran, Rome

    After all, we worship not a word, but the Word, the “speech,” as it were of the Father, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity.  The words we use matter.  When we use good words, we build up.  When we use bad words, we tear down.  When we use good words, we help to communicate that we belong to the Word who is Sinless.  When we use bad words, we communicate that what we do and what we say do not have to have a relation to each other.  We confuse others by suggesting that following Christ does not make a difference in the choice of our vocabulary.
    Words can be in the context of many areas of life.  Our speech can be about God and His Church.  Or it can be about individuals.  Or it can be about the world or inanimate things.  God gave us speech precisely to glorify Him and to edify others, which is precisely also the purpose of the liturgy, the glorification of God and the edification of man, as Sacrosanctum concilium states.  
    We glorify God through prayer, both public like the Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours, and through private prayers like our devotions, our morning offerings, our prayers of thanksgiving.  We edify man by helping others grow in union with Christ.  Sometimes we do that by providing kind, gentle words that encourage.  At other times we need to warn and discipline with harsher words, but always undergirded with charity.  We are called to talk about our Lord to others, and, as St. Peter states, be ready to give a defense for our hope in the Lord.  We have a duty to stand up for the weak and the oppressed, as the prophets remind us again and again.
    Certainly, not all crude or bad speech is mortal sin.  Gossip is often a sin of speech with which people struggle, as well as detraction.  It can be hard not to talk about others, especially with our friends are doing so.  But if we wish our religion to be pure, St. James says, then our speech needs to be as well.  
    This also, perhaps especially, concerns members of the Church.  Detraction, lies, slander, and gossip can destroy parish communities, and we need to guard against it at all times, and avoid it whenever it rears its ugly head.  Satan is always seeking to divide communities of faith, and how often that happens in a parish among well-intentioned people.  If we are revealing the faults of others, or tearing down others in our words, we are not helping to build a larger, stronger parish community.
    It also goes for clergy and our speech about them.  We priests are especially bad at this.  Like a family, we are all too often quick to point out the faults of our brothers, and put them down, not only in front of brother priests, but also, sadly, sometimes in front of the lay faithful.  None of us, from me to the pope, are above reproach.  And yet do we offer criticism with charity, do we criticize the actions, rather than attacking the good name of the person?  Do we use phrases or terms that diminish the respect that we, and others, should have towards those who are engaged in holy orders?  I know this can be hard when we don’t agree with a priest, bishop, or even the pope.  But do we do so with charity?  If not, it is time that we repent, because our prayers may ring hollow if we praise God and ask Him for help on one side of our mouth, and then berate and belittle those whom God has given to lead His Church on the other.

    A priest I know in Mississippi recently had the opportunity to meet His Eminence, Raymond Cardinal Burke.  This Mississippi priest is a great devotee of the Extraordinary Form, and celebrates it in his diocese.  He works to promote the sacred liturgy and the beauty and transcendence that accompany right worship of God.  He related that Cardinal Burke gave a talk over breakfast, and said, “‘Those American bloggers who do things like call the Holy Father “Bergoglio” are not promoting Catholicism.  There is nothing Catholic about disrespecting the office of Bishop or the Papacy.’”  I know that many, myself included, sometimes struggle with Pope Francis’s prudential judgements and the way he expresses himself off the cuff.  But Cardinal Burke is echoing what we hear from St. James today.  If we are willing to share posts on social media that detract and slander, even if simply by innuendo or suggestion, then I hope we’re willing to share the same just divine punishments with those who composed the post or tweet.
    Our Lord tells us today that if we ask for anything in His name, He will give it to us.  Of course, this presumes that the desire of our hearts is in accord with His Sacred Heart and the will of God.  But perhaps the request, even in the name of Christ, would not be heard if we are trashing the Vicar of Christ, or if we are insulting those with whom Christ identifies, especially the “least of his brothers,” as He says in Matthew 25.  It is certain that our prayer will be more efficacious if we see Christ in others and treat them and talk about them appropriately.  Again, this doesn’t mean that we can’t disagree or criticize, but that we do so with respect.  Perhaps, instead of saying, “Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?” we should rather say, “Do you pray to God with that mouth?”  God wants to hear our prayers and answer them, but He may be more likely to grant the prayers of those who, even in their speech about others, honors the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.