16th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Wis 12:13, 16-19; Rom 8:26-27; Mt 13:24-43.

VIDEO

Have you ever thought:
we could fix what is wrong with the world
if only we could get rid of those people?
Admit it.
You have had that thought.
We all have.
We might fill in the blank 
represented by those people
in different ways—
conservatives, liberals,
fascists, communists,
immigrants, nativists, 
peaceniks, warmongers,
feminists, misogynists,
people who cut you off in traffic
or talk in the movie theater,
those who like the Latin Mass
or the music of Marty Haugen—
but we all have people we think
the world or the Church
would be better off without.

The problem with eradicating those people
is made clear by Jesus’s parable today:
good and bad, 
wheat and weeds,
children of the Kingdom
and children of the evil one,
grow up together in the world
and in trying to eradicate the bad
you risk eradicating the good as well.
We can see this pretty clearly 
if we look at human history:
from the French Revolution 
to the killing fields of Cambodia,
in attempting to create an ideal society,
we human beings create terror instead,
uprooting the good with the bad.

But the problem is deeper than that.
It is not just that those people live mixed in
with the good people of the world,
and we can’t eradicate the bad
without eradicating the good;
the problem is that we often have trouble
distinguishing the good from the evil.
The word that our translation 
renders as “weeds”
is in fact the name 
of a specific weed: zizania—
a weed that looks very similar to wheat.
To untrained or hasty eyes
the two are indistinguishable.
Likewise, the children of the Kingdom
and the children of the evil one
might be indistinguishable 
to our human eyes,
and the problem with thinking 
those people are the problem
is the problem of
distinguishing good from evil.

And we often fail when it comes 
to taking the measure 
of goodness or badness.
We mistake the bad for the good
and the good for the bad.
In today’s Gospel, 
between Jesus’s parable 
of the wheat and the weeds 
and the explanation of it that he
offers to his disciples,
St. Matthew’s Gospel provides 
two other short parabolic sayings:
the kingdom of God 
is like the tiny mustard seed
that becomes a large bush,
and the kingdom of God
is like the bit of yeast 
that leavens the whole dough.
A mustard seed is very small,
and yeast—
a single-celled organism—
is even smaller.
If the kingdom of God
begins as something so seemingly insignificant,
something so small as to escape our notice,
something that needs time 
to germinate and to leaven,
surely we might miss its presence
within another person.

Perhaps someone’s goodness
is a small, hidden trait
that we do not see.
Perhaps the seed of the kingdom 
is buried within 
a life of struggle and failure,
a difficult personality
or the legacy of poor choices.
Perhaps a child of the Kingdom
looks to us like one of those people.

Mark Ji Tianxiang was a Chinese Christian
who lived at the end of the 19th century.
He had become addicted to the opium
he used to treat a stomach ailment,
For thirty years he was denied the sacraments
because clergy at the time saw addiction
as a sign of moral weakness.
Yet though he was denied 
absolution and communion
he faithfully attended Mass daily,
no doubt crying out to God
with inexpressible groanings,
shamed by his weakness and failure.
Perhaps some of his fellow Christians thought: 
this man could have been a saint
if only he weren’t one of those people, 
the addicts who have wasted their lives
indulging their appetite for drugs.
As it was, he was seen by them
as a weed among the wheat,
a social plague whose eradication 
could only make the world 
a better place.

In the year 1899, the so-called Boxer Rebellion—
an anti-Western and anti-Christian movement—
broke out in northern China.
Mark Ji Tianxiang and members of his family
were seized and imprisoned
and told they would be executed
if they did not renounce their Catholic faith.
Mark remained steadfast in his faith 
in Christ and his Church,
even though that Church had denied him
the grace of the sacraments for three decades. 
He asked to be executed last,
so that no one else would have to die alone.
On July 9, 1900
he watched his family members 
go to their deaths one-by-one
as he sang the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary
to strengthen and encourage them,
until he himself was finally beheaded.

A hundred years later
he was canonized as a saint
by Pope John Paul II.
Through the passage of time
the holiness hidden during his life
by the struggle of addiction
was now revealed.
The tiny mustard seed had become a great bush;
the bit of yeast had leavened the whole loaf.

We would like to think we could fix 
what is wrong with the world
if only we could get rid of those people.
But who are those people?
Maybe it is not the person addicted to drugs
or the person who cuts me off in traffic
or the person who votes 
in a way I disapprove of
or whose customs and language 
are alien to me.
Maybe it is I myself, 
who presume to judge.
Maybe we, 
who judge by appearances,
in haste and in ignorance,
are those people.

We certainly can and must 
judge actions to be good or bad;
but the judgment of souls?
Jesus’s counsel in his parable
is that we leave that judgment up to God,
the one who searches hearts,
the master of might 
who judges with clemency.
He will send his angels 
in his own time
to execute his judgment
and eradicate evil,
but woe to those 
who would rush that judgment.
For the mustard seed needs time to germinate;
the yeast needs times to leaven the loaf.

So let us pray 
for those children of the Kingdom
who suffer the judgment 
we pass in our ignorance.
Let us pray for ourselves,
who stand condemned 
by our own ignorant judgment.
And let us pray that God, 
who is merciful,
might have mercy on us all.
St. Mark Ji Tianxiang,
pray for us.

16th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Last week we heard a parable from Jesus about sowing —
and saw that in the kingdom of God how one sows
might not be what we would normally expect.
Today we hear a parable from Jesus
about tending crops once they sprout —
and see that how one tends crops in the kingdom of God
is also not what one might expect:
rather than pulling up the weeds
that have been maliciously sown in the field,
and risk pulling up the wheat as well,
the owner of the field says to let the wheat and the weeds
grow together until harvest time
when they will both be pulled up and can then be separated.

Later in the section of the Gospel of Matthew from which we read today
we find an interpretation of this parable
in which the field represents the world,
the enemy who sows the weeds is the evil one, the devil,
the weeds themselves are the children of the evil one,
the wheat is the children of the kingdom,
and the harvest is the final judgement,
at which point the children of the world
will be separated out from the children of the kingdom
and cast into the fire of perdition.

This interpretation of the parable reminds us that,
while good and evil are realities in this world,
we should not judge too quickly and be too ready to uproot
what we perceive to be evil
because in doing so we may in fact harm the good.
We have seen in our own lifetimes the result of utopian schemes
to create a world free from those
whom one particular group perceives as the "weeds":
cultural revolutions, ethnic cleansings, and killing fields.
The parable shows us that,
while we must make judgements about good and evil,
we ought not act on such judgements too quickly,
because our perception is too often clouded,
leading us to pull up the wheat as well as the weeds.
It is God’s task to cleanse the world of evil,
to make the field free of weeds,
and God, whose "mastery over all things makes [God] lenient to all,"
as our first reading puts it,
chooses to leave the judgement to the harvest time,
because what at first appears a weed
just might, with God’s grace, ripen into wheat.

This interpretation has served Christians well through the centuries,
helping them to understand
how Christians should practice forbearance toward others
as we await God’s final judgement.
However, this interpretation is not the only possible one.
As Pope Gregory the Great said,
scripture "grows through reading" (Moralia 20:1),
and as Christians have read this parable in new times and places
they have discovered new aspects of it.

One such new interpretation arose in the 4th century,
in the midst of a controversy in Northern Africa
between St. Augustine
and a group of Christians known as Donatist
(not because they had any great love for donuts,
but because one of their early leaders was named Donatus).
The Donatists understood the holiness of the Church
to be constituted by the holiness of her members,
and thus, in the terms of our parable,
saw the Church to be wholly made up of the "wheat."
Thus the members of the Church,
while they may have had to live
surrounded by the weeds of the world,
could at least have the consolation of knowing
that they were part of a community of holy people.

Augustine, in contrast, saw the Church not as an enclave of purity,
but as what he called a "mixed body" of saints and sinners,
saints and sinners who could not always
be easily distinguished from one another.
Appearances can be deceiving,
and someone who appears saintly
can in fact be the worst of sinners
and someone who seems to be a sinner
could be destined by God to become a great saint.

For Augustine, the field in which weeds were mixed with wheat
was not simply the world
but also the Church in which saints and sinners grew up together.
And the forbearance shown in uprooting the weeds from the wheat
must be applied within the Church as well as in the world,
because the holiness of the Church
depends not on our goodness but on God’s grace.
Just as we can succumb to utopian schemes
designed to create a perfect world
so too we can succumb to utopian schemes
designed to create a perfect Church.

I sometimes say that the only thing worse than the Church as she actually is,
is the Church as I would have her be if I but had the power,
a Church consisting of only "good Catholics,"
as I would imagine "good Catholics" to be.

I suspect that for some of us,
we imagine a certain sort of "conservative" or "traditionalist" Catholic
as being particularly subject to this temptation:
the sort of Catholic who is enthusiastic
about excommunicating the "bad Catholics,"
meaning the ones who dissent from,
or simply struggle with,
certain Church teachings
or who vote for the wrong candidate
or who fail to be enthusiastic soldiers in the culture wars.
Such a person can succumb to thinking
that the Church would be better off without the "bad Catholics."

But I don’t think anyone is really immune from this temptation.
Those who see themselves as "progressive" Catholics
can be no less enthusiastic
about declaring their own vision of the Church to be the "true" one,
the one that embodies the spirit of Vatican II,
or the discipleship of equals,
or the Church of the future.
They can be no less quick to write off their fellow Catholics
as weeds among the wheat of progressive Catholicism
simply because they love the Tridentine Latin Mass or the rosary,
because they have large families
or think the issue of legalized abortion
is a non-negotiable in casting their vote.
Someone who thinks of themselves as liberal or progressive
can also succumb to thinking that the Church,
the Church as they would have it be,
would be better off without such people.

My point is not to single out any one group within the Church
but to point out the temptation that we all have
to think that the Church would be better off
without all the "bad Catholics," whomever we think they might be.
These thoughts are the seeds sown by the evil one
in the field of our heart.
From these thoughts spring the weeds of malice and division,
when we claim for ourselves
the ultimate judgement that belongs to God alone.
The weeds that need to be uprooted are not our fellow Catholics,
but these weeds of malice and division
that we find in ourselves, in the field of our own heart.
This does not mean that we ought to deny
that there are weeds among the wheat;
there is good and evil, right and wrong,
in the world and in the Church.
But we ought not to presume that our judgements in these matters
are God’s judgements,
that the person we see as a weed,
suitable only for uprooting and casting into the fire,
has not be chosen by God to bear much fruit.
Whoever has ears ought to hear.