Homily for the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

          

    

First Reading: Wis 12:13, 16–19
Responsorial Psalm: Ps 86:5–6, 9–10, 15–16
Second Reading: Rom 8:26–27
Gospel: Mt 13:24–43 or 13:24–30

Seminarian Residence Chapel, Crowley, TX

    When I entered seminary back in 2014, I spent the first six months wondering “what the heck am I doing here?!” Then for the next five years I spent a lot of time wondering “what the heck is HE doing here?!” That kind of thinking – second-guessing God - seems to me to be on a lot a minds these days with all the growth of evil in the world. We find ourselves asking God why he allows all the chaos to arise: pandemics, rioting, politically-driven divisiveness in the media, and ‘cancel culture’ working to silence debate and dialogue. As the Church herself comes under increasing attack in America, churches burned, statues toppled, tabernacles desecrated, it is tempting to lose patience with God and wonder why he allows all this to occur. We lose sight of our inner peace.

          In today’s Gospel we heard the parable of the wheat and the weeds. I believe the parable offers an excellent insight into theodicy – the problem of evil. ‘Theodicy’, not The Odyssey by the Greek poet Homer. The problem of evil and why God permits it to persist in the world is one which philosophers have pondered for many centuries before Christ and theologians have argued since God entered human history as our Messiah. This parable of the wheat and the weeds suggests an answer. It also helps us to resist what our Holy Grandfather Benedict called “the temptation of impatience,”[1] that is, the temptation to insist on “immediately finding great success” in lessening the evils of this world and thereby making it more human.

          When the disciples asked Jesus to explain the parable, he revealed to them the sower of seed, like in the parable we heard last week, is the Son of Man – Jesus Christ himself; the field is our world; the good seed (the wheat) represents those who follow Christ and work to build up the Kingdom of God; the bad seed (the weeds) represents those who follow Satan and spread destruction, confusion, violence, and disorder. In the parable, the sower forbid those tending the garden from pulling up the weeds – it would prove harmful to the wheat as well, for the roots of both are tightly intertwined. Just like people are dependent on one another, for good or otherwise.

The sowers patience with allowing the weeds to grow alongside the wheat is a message to us to have faith in God’s patience. While we wait in hope for the final judgement, when the weeds will be separated out and tossed into everlasting hellfire, we are to continue our work for the kingdom in all Christian charity, always aware that evil will exist alongside good until the end of days. St. Augustine wrote: “Why are you so hasty, you servants full of zeal? You see weeds among the wheat, you see evil Christians among the good; and you wish to root up the evil ones; be quiet, it is not the time of harvest…Why do you worry yourselves? Why bear impatiently the mixture of the evil with the good? In the field they may be with you, but they will not be so in the barn.”^[2]

But why does God have such patience with those who work against his Kingdom? Is not the answer the heart of the Gospel? “For God so loved the world he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life (Jn 3:16 NABRE). God’s boundless patience reveals the depths his mercy. Our heavenly Father wants to save as many of his beloved children as possible, so he withholds the Day of Judgement until everyone that can be saved, is saved.

While we must accept the problem of evil in the world, we must never tire of working to oppose it by the example of our lives, our actions, and our words. We are to be about our work from within this society, always living in a way that attracts people and transforms the culture. That is our work – that is our job. Let us be about the work of the Kingdom and in peace and patience allow God work in his own time.

St Joseph, Most Valiant, Pray for us!

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[1] Curtis Mitch and Edward Sri, The Gospel of Matthew, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010), 182.

^[2] Augustine of Hippo, Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament, vol. 1, A Library of Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church, Anterior to the Division of the East and West (Oxford; London: John Henry Parker; J. G. F. and J. Rivington; J. and F. Rivington, 1844–1845), 202.