Gospel according to Saint Matthew 13,24-43:

Jesus put another parable before the crowds: «The kingdom of heaven can be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. While everyone was asleep, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and left. When the plants sprouted and produced grain, the weeds also appeared.
»Then the servants of the owner came to him and said: ‘Sir, was it not good seed that you sowed in your field? Where did the weeds come from?’. He answered them: ‘This is the work of an enemy’. They asked him: ‘Do you want us to go and pull up the weeds?’. He told them: ‘No, when you pull up the weeds, you might uproot the wheat with them. Let them just grow together until harvest; and at harvest time I will say to the workers: Pull up the weeds first, tie them in bundles and burn them; then gather the wheat into my barn’».

Jesus put another parable before them, «The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, that a man took and sowed in his field. It is smaller than all other seeds, but once it has fully grown, it is bigger than any garden plant; like a tree, the birds come and rest in its branches».

He told them another parable, «The kingdom of heaven is like the yeast that a woman took and buried in three measures of flour until the whole mass of dough began to rise».

Jesus taught all this to the crowds by means of parables; He did not say anything to them without using a parable. So what the Prophet had said was fulfilled: ‘I will speak in parables. I will proclaim things kept secret since the beginning of the world’».

Then He sent the crowds away and went into the house. And his disciples came to him saying, «Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field». Jesus answered them, «The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world; the good seed are the people of the Kingdom; the weeds are those who follow the evil one. The enemy who sows them is the devil; the harvest is the end of time and the workers are the angels. Just as the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so will it be at the end of time. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom all that is scandalous and all who do evil. And these will be thrown in the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the just will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. If you have ears, then hear».

The surprise of the kingdom of heaven

Luis CASASUS President of the Idente Missionaries

Rome, July 23, 2023 | XV Sunday in Ordinary Time

Wis 12: 13.16-19; Rom 8: 26-27; Mt 13: 24-43

1. The weeds. It is always necessary to meditate again on the best known parables of Christ, among which are the three that today’s Gospel text contains. His teaching is inexhaustible.

For example, let us begin by asking ourselves who are the weeds of the field. Jesus tells us that they are the children of the evil one. This is a very harsh expression, which is certainly not a label for some people, but an ” sonship ” that perhaps without being very conscious we accept in some moments of our life.

In Oscar Wilde’s play A Woman of No Importance, one of the characters, selfish and dishonest, named Lord Illingworth, pronounces the famous phrase: Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future. Although the interpretation of the phrase is different for this scoundrel, it opens our imagination to the possibility that the lives of the so-called “good” or “bad” can change radically.

In fact, it is worth remembering that among the disciples to whom Jesus taught this parable were Judas, who would betray Him; Thomas, who doubted Him; James and John, who harbored personal ambitions; and Peter, who denied knowing Him. All of them, except the first, we call saints today.

Each one of us is a mixture of wheat and weeds. It is also true that many of us spend our lives bearing bad fruit, making others suffer, being weeds in the guise of wheat, and others will be remembered as people who always did good. But, again, the story of the good thief on the cross, next to Christ, reminds us that the Holy Spirit can bring about any change in you and me, at any moment of our life; sometimes after sincere repentance and sometimes through some tragic or violent situation. Thus, we become children of the kingdom of heaven.

When we accept to be children of the evil one, inevitably we share with him some of his traits, and in this “air of family” the lie stands out. This is fully illustrated at the moment of the temptation of Adam and Eve. We deceive ourselves with justifications and try to deceive others in many ways, but always giving the appearance of being just, as the weeds appear to be wheat.

We exaggerate, minimize, keep part of the truth, justify our behavior… the list could be endless, but the truth is that lies take over our way of perceiving reality, becoming invisible, as water is to fish. As one author said, lying is a form of arrogance, because with it I decide what is best for someone else or what is best for me, even though reality says otherwise.

The reason given by the owner of the sown field for NOT pulling up the weeds is remarkable: it could harm the wheat. The righteous, the person who sincerely desires to be faithful, has to live among people who lie, who pretend to deceive, so that the actions of that righteous person shine like the sun in the Father’s kingdom. The light shines in the darkness, and the truth of the righteous person shines, sooner or later, in contrast to the falsehood of those who lie. The faithful and truthful person, particularly the one who acknowledges his errors, is giving a testimony of how the Spirit makes him strong, capable of surrendering his fame in service to justice and to the presence of God in his life. Yes; the weeds are necessary… even if only as a background.

Little or very deceitful, we are all sinners and we can say it with the confidence which Christ asks that the one who is clean throw the first stone at the adulterous woman (Mt 8: 7). From here we can draw a second lesson, especially useful when we see that someone is adamant in his behavior of pride, selfishness and falsehood: We do not know how the weeds were sown in his heart. We ignore what fiber of his soul has been wounded by the devil, what weight the experiences of the past have in his life, what is the fear that dominates him and that perhaps he cannot yet look face to face….

The point is that wheat and weeds grow in us at the same time, and that a testimony of innocence can make the former prevail, as it happened to Peter, James or John. How and when we can hardly ever know.

Divine patience is not like ours. The owner of the field, in the parable of the weeds, asks his workers to wait, for he trusts that the wheat will grow in spite of everything.

In the last few weeks I have had the good fortune to be able to talk to very different young people in various places. One of them asked me: What is your deepest experience with God? I tried to answer him with a story in which I feel I am the protagonist.

Imagine that a young man steals a car from a family man. But he unexpectedly runs out of gas on a street and the police, noticing a suspicious attitude, stop him. They call the owner of the car and ask him if he wants to denounce the thief.

But the owner asks, on the contrary, to talk to him. He tells him that he is not going to report him and asks him for a favor: he gives him the car keys and asks him to pick up his two children from school, as he has an unexpected meeting that he cannot miss. The children recognize their father’s car, the “new driver” explains to them that he is fulfilling a mission entrusted by their father and leaves them happily in their mother’s hands, after parking the car in the garage.

Yes, I confessed that I feel like the character in that story, with the difference that…I believe I am being forgiven in that way several times each day.

Divine forgiveness, which essentially consists of keeping me by his side, of sharing his own intimate concerns, of asking for my help after having let him down with my clumsiness, my betrayals, or my fear.

—ooOoo—

2. Tiny seed, tiny yeast. The other two parables we hear today point to the same truth: the surprise of the kingdom of heaven. The dynamics of a small seed and a few grams of yeast are surprising. But we are also reminded that nature, and we ourselves, are called to a process of growth and change that we must accept. Earlier we mentioned divine patience, but now it is ours that comes into play.

Many people who struggle with a vice or temptation feel hopeless and eventually give up their efforts. The experience of the great (and not so great) scientists, the wisdom of many religions and, above all, the Gospel, invites us to learn from our mistakes and our sins how we are limited, vulnerable and unable to make plans for our lives. It is one of the lessons that push us to truly walk with Christ.

But let us not forget that, at other times, we are surprised by the unexpected speed of events. A tree grows relatively slowly, but the effect of the yeast in the dough takes place in a few hours… Sometimes we wish we had more time to make a decision before the divine will, forgetting that Mary, Joseph, St. Paul or many martyrs received a “lightning call” from God, which demanded a response based more on trust in Him than on reasoning. And, indeed, the power of a minimum of faith in Him, comparable also to the mustard seed, is revealed by Christ (Lk 17: 5-6), because it moves the mountains of our heart.

From the perspective of the apostolate, of the transmission of the faith, these two parables announce to us what history confirms, that, in the midst of persecutions, misunderstandings and scandals, the Church founded by Christ will continue to grow (not necessarily in number) in spite of the few means, of the personal shortcomings of many of us. A generosity that few perceive, a silent gesture of forgiveness, an inspired caress, will not remain without effect, because, before us, the Holy Spirit has faith in every action we do in his name.

But we must also remember that, in the Old Testament, in the life of Christ and today, there are times when most people are not ready to welcome the message of the kingdom of heaven. Cultures, cities, people change and so does their sensitivity to listen. Christ already warned his disciples that sometimes they would have to shake the dust off their sandals, as a painful sign of farewell, but never of abandonment of their mission. They immediately had to turn to many generous souls who were waiting for the Good News, sometimes without knowing it.

The history of ideas and the history of science show us that the most relevant advances are always produced by observing the concerns and questions asked by those who have preceded us, even if we are in total opposition to their answers, to the solutions they propose.

But each of us, without needing to be philosophers or scientists, remembers, at some moments in our lives, a word, a small gesture that was decisive for our spiritual life, like a mustard seed or a few grams of yeast.

With some embarrassment, I share an experience from when I was only nine years old, a shy child who went to the neighborhood parish with my brother one Sunday.

A beggar, probably an alcoholic, who was sitting on the sidewalk, seeing us well dressed and probably hoping to get a coin, said to me (literally): There goes an athlete who will change the world. Those obsequious words, spoken by a stranger, had a surprising effect on my childish soul. During the whole mass I was thinking that I should not be afraid, because a stranger, someone who did not know me, had seen in me something special. I think that day, as an altar boy, I was more careless than usual, but at least I asked Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament to help me to be as that beggar saw me.

If these trivial things have an effect on our lives, we should think that Providence knows how to take advantage of the moment, the people, the events, to sow the best aspiration in us, which, in the midst of thorns, rocks and weeds, will bear the expected fruit if we have a little, a minimum of openness to the plans of God the Father, a faith like a grain of mustard seed.

Let us give thanks for having known the good and bad examples that push us to believe and hope more and more each day in Christ and in Him alone.

_______________________________

In the Sacred Hearts of Jesus, Mary and Joseph,

Luis CASASUS

President