Living The Word

A call to humility

By Father Douglas Grandon

Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 20

Wisdom 12:13,16-19; Psalm 86:5-6,9-10,15-16; Romans 8:26-27; Matthew 13:24-43

Long ago, there was a Roman emperor named Diocletian, who hated God and Christianity. He knew that if he could destroy all the Bibles, he could seriously cripple the church. So he sent his troops from diocese to diocese and demanded that every bishop surrender his precious, handwritten Bibles for destruction. Anyone who refused would be imprisoned and killed. Sadly, fearing the loss of their lives, numerous bishops complied.

When the emperor died, the persecution ended. The question arose among those who had remained faithful, “What should we do with our brother bishops who allowed Scripture to be destroyed? Should we restore them if they repent and perform proper acts of penance?”

Most agreed to restore their fallen colleagues. This became the official Catholic position. Others insisted so strongly that there should be no mercy that they eventually went into schism and became Donatists. The Donatists were committed to a merciless “seek and destroy” mission against all who had fallen into sin, even against those who had repented.

The kingdom, Jesus said, is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. As the farmer slept, his enemy sowed weeds in that same field. Only when both seeds matured and the wheat began to show its fruit, did it become obvious that the unfruitful weeds were present.

The farmer’s servants volunteered to pull the weeds. Because the roots of the wheat and weeds were entangled, however, pulling the weeds would mean uprooting much of the wheat, too. So the farmer allowed the wheat and weeds to grow together, Jesus said. Only at the time of harvest would the wheat be harvested and the weeds gathered for burning.

The disciples were puzzled by this parable. At the end of the day, they inquired what it meant.

Jesus explained that he is the farmer who planted the wheat. The field is the world. The wheat represents believers. The enemy is the devil and the weeds he sows are “sons of the evil one.” The wheat and weeds will grow together until the time of the final judgment, when “the righteous will shine like the sun” and all evildoers will be thrown into the fiery furnace.

With this parable, Jesus warned his disciples not to expect the church to be heaven on earth. Rather, the church will be a place where both “children of God” and “children of the evil one” will be present.

We remember that among the Twelve were both Peter, the rock, and Judas, the betrayer. In the Acts of the Apostles, we read of the faithful ministry couple, Aquila and Priscilla, but also of Ananias and Sapphira, who shamefully lied to the Holy Spirit. Unfaithfulness and moral scandal are certainly not unique to the modern church!

In 2005, Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher to the papal household, offered this commentary on the parable: “The church herself is a field, within which seeds and weeds, the good and the wicked, grow together, a place where there is room to grow, to be converted and above all to imitate God’s patience. . . . God’s patience, moreover, is not a simple patience, that is, to wait for Judgment Day and then punish with greater satisfaction. It is long suffering, mercy and the will to save.”

Father Cantalamessa goes on: “In the kingdom of God, therefore, there is no place for impatient servants, for people who do no more than invoke God’s punishments and point out to him, every now and then, whom he must strike. . . . To us also the patience of the owner of the field is indicated as a model. We must wait for the harvest . . . as men who make their own God’s desire that ‘all men be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth’ (1 Timothy 2:4).”

Jesus’ parable is a call to humility and mercy. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states the matter quite clearly: “Christ ‘holy, innocent and undefiled,’ knew nothing of sin, but came only to expiate the sins of the people. The church, however, clasping sinners to her bosom, at once holy and always in need of purification, follows constantly the path of penance and renewal. All members of the church, including her ministers, must acknowledge that they are sinners. In everyone, the weeds of sin will still be mixed with the good wheat of the Gospel until the end of time” (827).

What this means, quite simply, is that there is only one field from which it is right and necessary to immediately pull out the weeds — and that is from the field of our own heart.

Father Douglas Grandon is parochial vicar at Sacred Heart Parish in Moline and associate director of the diocesan Office of Catechetics.