OT XVI [A] Wis 12:13, 16-19; Rom 8:26-27; Mt 13:24-43

As in the case of the parable of the Sower, which we heard last week, today also we have the Kingdom Parables of Jesus. Kingdom in the Gospel does not refer to a place, either here or hereafter.  The Kingdom is primarily an environment, it is a set of relationships, and it is a situation where God’s values or His reign will prevail.  The divine values in practice are nothing but the deepest human values and aspirations as mirrored in the life of Jesus, who is himself the revelation of God to us in accessible human form.  These values include truth, love, compassion, justice, a sense of solidarity with all other human beings, a sense of trust in others, deep respect for the dignity of every other human person, and a holistic concept of human growth and development.

Jesus sketches the situation of the Church in the world with three parables. The grain of mustard seed that becomes a tree indicates the growth of the Kingdom of God on earth. Also, the parable of leaven in the dough signifies the growth of the Kingdom, not so much in extension as in intensity. It indicates the transforming force of the Gospel that raises the dough and prepares it to become bread. The disciples easily understood these two parables, but not so the third, the seeds and the weeds, which Jesus explained to them separately.

 St. Augustine explained that the field in this parable is the world, but it is also the Church, the place in which saints and sinners live side-by-side, and in which there is room to grow and to be converted. "The evildoers," he said, "exist in this way either so that they will be converted, or because through them the good exercise patience." Hence the scandals that every now and then shake the Church should sadden, but not surprise us.

There are weeds also in every one of us, not only in the world and in the Church, and this should render us less ready to point the finger. To Luther, who rebuked Erasmus of Rotterdam for staying in the Catholic Church notwithstanding her corruption, the latter responded: "I support this Church in the hope that she will become better, because she is also constrained to bear with me in the hope that I will become better." Perhaps the main subject of the parable, however, is neither the seeds nor the weeds, but God's patience.

Through this parable, the Lord wants us to understand that the sons of the Kingdom will, throughout their lives, be confronted with the evil sown in the world by the enemy, the Satan, the adversary of the Salvation of men!  From the time of their coming into the world, up until their very last breath, the men and women who hope in the Salvation of God in Jesus Christ will have to fight against the sons of the Evil One, those whom the devil has seduced through thousands of subtle and malicious artifices.  It is useless to try to escape this since even the Son of Man himself permitted the devil to tempt him, and since, in the end, it was the servants of the angel of darkness who put the Son of God to death, for the Salvation of all.

 

God knew this before time began. So, He did not create two worlds, one for the “righteous” and another for “sinners.” Instead, he allows all of us to cohabit together in this same world. Though risky, this might be of some benefit. The righteous learn from the sinners’ misery and continue to struggle to remain virtuous. While the sinner, seeing the triumph of the righteous, equally struggles to live a better life. However, Paul reminds us that: “Though we live in this world, we do not wage war as the world does” (2 Cor 10:3). Also, he warns us: “Do not be conformed to this world” (Rom 12:2).

Whether we would be willing to admit it or not, both wheat and darnel may be mixed up within every person. Goodness and evil, love and hate, prosperity and adversity, joy and sorrow all are so intimately intertwined. We may risk eliminating the good, in our zealous desire to root out the bad.

 Summing up the three parables, we see a specific development of God’s Kingdom among us.  The Kingdom of God is going to be, on the whole, a messy business in which the good and bad, the strong and the weak, the clean and the corrupt will rub shoulder to shoulder both inside the Church and its communities and outside it.  To try to create islands of absolute integrity is not realistic and is even self-defeating.  The conversion of our societies into Kingdom-like communities is a very gradual process.  The coming of the Kingdom, then is not going to be a neat and tidy process. What may seem to be a mess may actually be God’s way of providing a solution. The perceived curse is actually a blessing.

In God’s Kingdom, He is in charge. He sets the agenda, He lays out the path, and He determines the deadline. The problem is that the difference between wheat and darnel is not always going to be obvious and that there is the potential danger of mistaking the good for the bad, the will of man for that of the will of God. Everything may seem to be getting completely out of control. But God remains in control. God does not only tolerate the messiness but in fact subverts the messiness and uses it as the raw material of His Kingdom. He often chooses and uses the defective, the rejected, the marginalised, and the sinners to be His instruments of grace.

The Kingdom is built on the blood of martyrs, rather than on success stories. Let us never forget that persecution cannot destroy the Church; it can only make her stronger. Let’s pray today that the Lord may grant us tolerance, patience and understanding in seeing the kingdom become a reality.