Mass readings for the 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time:
Wisdom 12.13, 16-19 Psalm 86.5-6, 9-10, 15-16 Romans 8.26-27 Matthew 13.24-43
In meditating upon today’s gospel, I couldn’t help but think that when, metaphorically speaking, I look out at the fields of the Lord, I see a lot of weeds – don’t take that personally, it’s more of a global observation; and I don’t think I’m alone in seeing that.
These fields, sown with the Word of God, are the Church. Jesus in this parable tells us to expect weeds in the midst of the good wheat; and we know that the Church is from time to time beset by heresy, schism, apostasy, spiritual laziness, indifference and so on. We see and hear those who are ostensibly the teachers of the faith and preachers of the Word who say the most ridiculous things, contrary to the faith and undermining of the Church’s mission. Surely, these are the weeds Jesus is talking about.
Yet Jesus tells us that we shouldn’t worry about eradicating them. He isn’t saying that we shouldn’t be mindful of the weeds once we’ve identified them, but he discourages us from trying to uproot them, which seems odd – won’t they compete with, and displace the wheat?
This past week there was a dust up between celebrated (celebrity?) bishop Robert Barron and the cardinal (elect) in charge of World Youth Day, Cardinal Bishop Americo Aguiar. Aquiar, to the puzzlement of many, including myself and the good bishop Barron, publicly stated that,
“We don’t want to convert the young people to Christ or to the Catholic Church or anything like that at all.” He went on to say that he hoped, “That we all understand that differences are a richness and the world will be objectively better if we are capable of placing in the hearts of all young people this certainty.”
What the cardinal-bishop said would seem to imply that fundamental disagreement on matters of religion is good in itself, indeed, that this is what God actively desires. But the Church doesn’t teach this at all; or for that matter that we aren’t to evangelize people.
Bishop Barron responded in a public letter, writing, “Behind so much of the language of tolerance, acceptance, and non-judgmentalism in regard to religion is the profound conviction that religious truth is unavailable to us and that it finally doesn’t matter what one believes as long as one subscribes to certain ethical principles. Provided one is a decent person, who cares if he or she is a devout Christian, Buddhist, Jew, or Muslim—or nonbeliever?”
And just to clarify, Bishop Barron forthrightly said that is not what the Church teaches. Indeed, when he speaks at the upcoming celebration in Portugal, he has said he most definitely will be evangelizing, and working to bring young people to Christ.
But note: Bishop Barron didn’t call for Aquiar’s ouster, he didn’t demand the cardinal’s resignation. He’s just going to advocate all the more for the Church’s true teaching, and to live it out in his preaching and evangelizing.
Yet the question arises, did Pope Francis just appoint a “weed” to the college of Cardinals? Is Cardinal-bishop Aguiar of the seed of Satan? How disturbing it is to contemplate that! Should this weed not be pulled up.
Well, when we look at the parable of the wheat and the weeds, we might conclude that to be the case, but we need to be mindful that Jesus is speaking to us about our perception of the world around us, and specifically the Church. He is addressing our real feelings of frustration and fear when we see people acting contrary to God’s teaching, either consciously so, or unwittingly going along with the trends of our corrupt culture, and so, taking themselves, and leading others, to spiritual destruction. I would say that Bishop Aquiar is likely in this latter group; a man captured by the culture but not realizing how his thinking is a prisoner of it – and that is the case with so many Christians today who, to reference Bishop Barron’s comments, equate “niceness” with faithfulness when quite often that is not the case at all.
A real telling aspect of this famous parable that would help us better get at some of Jesus’ nuance is unfortunately lost to us in this translation where Jesus appears to be talking about weeds in a generic sense, but in the original Greek, he is actually speaking about a very specific plant.
Some of you may be aware of an older translation of this famous story, and in that Jesus doesn’t talk about wheat and weeds, but wheat and “tares.”
Tare, also known as bearded darnel, is a weed that looks a lot like wheat, and really not until the two plants mature is the difference obvious. So, to get rid of the weed, one needs to examine the plants – that’s time consuming, and it’s apt, just as the farmer in the parable says to his servants, to lead to the trampling underfoot of good wheat.
So, if one wants to understand why, for instance, the Church is reluctant to excommunicate the many notorious Catholics who flout Church teaching, we can look to this parable. You know we have all these actors and politicians, celebrities of whatever kind who turn up at public events wearing crucifixes, some making a point of telling the media that they are “Catholic” as they walk into a Planned Parenthood fundraiser in clear and unambiguous support of abortion. Why aren’t they kicked out of the Church?
Well, from the Church’s perspective, such people who flout the Apostolic teaching even while insisting on their membership in the Church, they are informally excommunicated, they’ve taken themselves out; but are they out for good? Can we know for certain that these are the weeds that Jesus spoke of; or are they just immature wheat? Will they yet grow into the promise of their baptisms? We can only wait and see for the final judgment to know for sure – So, for us we need to keep an eye on this suspect wheat, but we cannot know for sure what or who they are until the harvest comes.
This raises an interesting theological question. Are weeds always weeds? Once a weed always a weed? Because if we’re talking about people here, then that means people can’t change. That those who appear to sprout from the seeds sewn by Satan are destined to a predetermined fate.
Here we run into the limits of analogy, the fact that all metaphors at some point fail. And for Jesus, this comparison of growing wheat infested with weeds is an analogy to illustrate one point, but it’s not what we might call a statement of Christian anthropology – Jesus isn’t arguing for predestination, that terrible teaching among some of our separated Christian brothers and sisters that says one is born either saved or damned, so there is nothing one can do about one’s destiny.
Rather, Jesus is telling us we won’t know who’s who until Judgment Day. In the meantime, be careful; but as to the fate of the weeds, let’s remember that in Jesus’ consistent call to repentance is proof that none of us are predestined to hell or to heaven, because by grace we can change. So, a weed can become wheat? Can a bishop of the Church be reformed? Can a sinner repent and return to the Lord? Yes. It happens all the time, and we should pray for transformation in our friends and family who haven’t the faith, for those celebrities and politicians who embarrass themselves. After all, how can a God who can turn water into wine, and bread and wine into Christ’s flesh and blood not be able to take a miserable weed and transform it into a glorious stalk of golden wheat ready for the harvest.
Amen.
