“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now I’m found, was blind, but now I see.”
Beautiful words to a beautiful hymn, but what is grace and how does it work?
Our readings today can help us understand how very amazing grace is. The catechism describes grace as “the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons and daughters, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life.” (CCC 1996)
Grace is how God changes us from ordinary human (and sinful) to become like God. The catechism words for this process are justification and grace; some of the poetry of it are metaphors used in today’s Gospel about the Kingdom of God.
Before we get into today’s readings, let’s talk about justification. Justification detaches us from sin AND simultaneously reconciles us to God, so that we accept God’s “Way” through faith. It conforms us to the righteousness of God.
The section on justification in the catechism concludes “…justification entails the sanctification of a person’s whole being.” This sanctification (making a person to be like God) is done through grace. And grace “is a participation in the life of God.” (CCC 1997)
That’s a lot of theology. Jesus says it simpler in today’s Gospel through metaphors: Grace enables us to be wheat in God’s field, bear good fruit, and yeast in the dough. It is the goodness of God around us that acts like sun, rain, and soil to make it possible for us turn away from sin and grow through the years to become more and more like God.
Now to today’s Gospel.
Matthew 13:24-43 (or Matthew 13:24-30)
Today’s Gospel includes three parables about the Kingdom of Heaven (translated in some versions as the Reign of God). The first and longest one is about the weeds in the wheat. Jesus explains what that one means to his disciples and to us: The one who sows the seed is Jesus. “The field is the world, the good seed the children of the kingdom. The weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age.”
Commentary can go a hundred ways with that. One way to go is to look at the images of the parable in the light of justification and grace: When wheat is growing, up until a head forms, it looks like grass—because it IS grass. Biblical scholars say that the weeds in this parable are another grass, darnel. They say you really can’t tell wheat from darnel when it’s knee high. You have to wait for the seed head to form. One message of the parable is that IN GOD’S KINGDOM, God lets things grow. He rains on the wheat and the darnel. The sun shines on the wheat and the darnel. The nutrients in the soil feed the wheat and the darnel. But, in the end, darnel turns out to be weeds and wheat turns out to be bread. The wheat accepts justification and nurtures grace to match the Way of God, i.e. to be in the Kingdom of God. Darnel does not. Grace is there for both.
We, who are the grass growing, are surrounded by God’s goodness—grace. Is that blade of grass next to me weeds or wheat? I can’t tell. No point judging the grass around me. The question is: Am I weeds or wheat?
The first work of grace is conversion. Then, there are all kinds of grace to form a seed into the makings of bread. (Read about them in the catechism, CCC 1996-2005.)
The next parable describes us all as a seed. This time, we are a mustard seed. In our world today, the mustard greens seed I plant in my garden is not especially small, but in Jesus’ world, it was a very small seed. Jesus says in this parable: See yourself as too small, too insignificant to be a wheat seed? No worries. However small you are, grace is there for you. You can grow through the sun, rain, and soil of God’s Way, his Kingdom, his reign. You, too, have a place in the Kingdom of God. God’s grace can give you everything you need.
The third parable today talks about another way that grace and God’s Way work. This parable describes the Reign of God as yeast in dough: we can become sources of grace that change the world around us. A little active grace can make a lot of bread to rise–through generations of loaves.
But there is a difference between us and the metaphors. The catechism tells us: “God’s free initiative demands man’s free response, for God has created man in his image by conferring on him, along with freedom, the power to know him and love him. THE SOUL ONLY ENTERS FREELY INTO THE COMMUNION OF LOVE.” (2003, 2002)
We get to choose whether we are weeds or wheat, mustard seed or yeast.
Wisdom 12:13, 16-19
Seed in the field or yeast in the dough don’t have to say “yes” to God in order to have sun, rain, and soil. But we have to say yes to God to be in God’s Kingdom.
What if you look at yourself today and see: “Oh my goodness! I’m darnel. I’m bad seed?” Or “I’m too small/hurt/angry/different. I don’t belong in the Kingdom of God!” Or even, “I may be intended to be bread for the world, but, bluntly, I’m flat bread these days. There’s no rise left in me.”
No matter, says the author of the book of Wisdom. “There is no god besides you who have the care of all, that you need show you have not unjustly condemned. For your might is the source of justice; your mastery over all things makes you lenient to all.”
There is an invitation to be open to conversion in those beautiful words. Judging the grass next door these days? Feeling smaller than a mustard seed? Pretty sure you are darnel? Timid in your wheat field? Unkind in what you say about weeds in your life?
Same invitation to all: Let the sun and the rain and the nurturance of God’s grace convert you, change you, grow you, transform you!
Romans 8:26-27
That can be a painful process. The reading from Paul can help. Until recent years I didn’t know about “Groaning in the Spirit.” I’d done it from time to time through the years, but I just thought I was upset. What is groaning in the Spirit? “The Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes with inexpressible groanings.” Have you ever just laid in your bed and cried out to God—sounding like a whimpering child or even some animal in pain? Tears come then, and all of you gives way to anguish.
That is groaning in the Spirit. It is your soul crying out to God without words, without thoughts, without telling God what to do. It is laying humble, open before Him.
It is a powerful, powerful prayer. God ALWAYS responds with healing “actual grace,” an extension of God’s grace of sun, rain, and soil to meet your desperate need in some dark night of your soul.
Prayer:
Lord, you know me. You know sometimes I am weeds, though I want to be wheat. You know sometimes I judge the blades of green next to me. You have heard my groanings of the Spirit in the nights of my soul. Your Wisdom now challenges me as you rebuke temerity within me, yet ask that I speak with clemency. Lead me to my next repentance. Give me your grace. Grow me in the fields of Your Kingdom of Grace, for Your Grace is always amazing!
