Did you happen to notice that Moses threw buckets of blood all over the people in the scriptures today from the book of Exodus? Can you imagine anything like that in this day and age? Moses took half the blood and threw it on the altar and the other half he threw on the people themselves. Talk about a covenant formed through blood! It just doesn’t get any more real than this. Thank God He doesn’t make us do things like this in our modern times. No one would understand this! Many people in the world already think we are cannibals because we eat the body of Jesus and drink his blood at our Catholic mass. Of course you see the correlation though, between the new covenant that God formed with His people through the blood sacrifice on the altar, and the sacrifice of Christ’s own life on the cross, which also formed a new covenant with God’s people. We drink Christ’s blood from the altar at every Catholic mass and many other people in the world just don’t understand this at all. But, that’s ok. We do. Christ was a sacrificial lamb that was led to the slaughter for our sakes. An innocent man was led off to be slaughtered because people didn’t understand who he really was. But, we do. Jesus Christ is the son of the living God.
We’ve all heard the story in the gospel today about the weeds in the wheat though. We can pretty much recite the whole story without even reading it. We are pretty sure that we know all about it. In a way, we do. It’s so simple and to the point that it can only be looked at so many ways. If we know all about this parable, then why do we have such trouble applying it to our everyday lives?
For an example, many of us get upset over other Catholics who are not living by the faith that we profess to believe. They seem to overlook a lot of our basic beliefs, like the value, dignity and worth of every human person’s life. That marriage means marriage in the biblical sense and nothing has changed that in thousands of years, so why are our politicians passing laws that redefine marriage? We are faithful to our marriage vows or remain unmarried if our marriages were not annulled, but there are others who divorce their spouse and marry another and still receive communion without the benefit of an annulment? In other words, we live by our Catholic beliefs – why don’t they? Why do they call themselves a Catholic if they don’t agree with our beliefs? It is not a very positive reflection on the Catholic church for this type of Catholics to be included in our Holy church, when they publicly contradict some of our most basic Catholic beliefs. Some of our politicians have even become a public spectacle that defies our pope and bishops, the teachings of our faith and our most basic Catholic beliefs. Why doesn’t someone do something about this?
You may be asking, what does this have to do with today’s gospel? Jesus basically says “don’t be too concerned about it”. Yes, all these things are true. God’s holy people, His kingdom, has been infiltrated by the enemy when we were asleep at the job. This has literally happened to us in the Catholic community throughout the world.
When the slaves asked if they should go out and pluck the weeds out of the wheat in today’s gospel though, Jesus said “No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them.” This is something we really need to consider as well. The arguing and uncharitable discord that would occur if we confronted every single weed that appears in our church, would hurt the other members of the church too. These people, these “weeds” have other family members and friends that would also be affected, and taking strong action against them could damage the faith of these family members and friends who love them too. The negativity could be enough to make them leave the church. If you confront one person and they leave the church, it could affect the rest of the family too, including future generations as well.
There is another thing to think about. Sometimes the “weeds” change their minds. In other words, what looks like a weed might actually be wheat that just hasn’t finished growing yet. We sow seeds, and water the plants but God alone gives the growth. We are not God and we do not know what the future holds for those that we view as “weeds” in our church right now. The thing is that we need to live our faith out the very best we can, without being overly worked up and concerned about the sinful lives of other people in our church. Our own holiness is what Christ wants us to focus on. He will take care of the rest.
Today’s gospel ends with a substantial reassurance of our own salvation and that justice will be served to those who disobey the Lord. It is reassuring, that we are His. But, it is a stern warning to those who insist on “being different” from the rest of us, that they will face him on the day of reckoning. Being “different” more “progressive” or “open minded” is going to cost them their souls in the long run. Let us pray for them, that this does not happen, for they do not know what they do.
