Brother Zachary at St. Meinrad taught us one way to pray from Scripture is to read it over slowly a couple of times, then ask it a question. When I read today’s Gospel two related questions popped up quickly: WHY did the disciples ask Jesus to explain the parable of the weeds in the wheat and WHY did the Holy Spirit have Matthew record the answer? As I have kept reading and praying with the passage, some very interesting answers emerge that encourage me as I live with the bumps and bruises of discipleship and parish life.
In Matthew 13 Jesus is teaching with parables. The parable of the weeds and the wheat can be summarized this way: A man sowed good seed on his land, but, in the night, an enemy sowed weed seed in with the good seed. When the plants began to grow, the man’s workers noticed the presence of the weeds and asked the man if they should try to pull them up. He answered, “No, if you pull up the weeds you might uproot the wheat along with them. Let them grow together until harvest; then at harvest time I will say to the harvesters, ‘First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles for burning; but gather the wheat into my barn.’” (Matthew 13: 24-30)
In today’s reading the disciples ask for an explanation of the parable. Jesus tells them that he is the one who sows the good seed. They are the seed. The weed seed are those who do evil. They are sown by Satan. The harvest is the “end of the age” when the Kingdom of God completely comes. (Matthew 13: 36-43)
As I prayed, the first application of the parable for my life went something like this, “So Jesus is telling the disciples that the Kingdom (the Church) is not going to be made up of only good people. Some people (ideas, decisions, movements, etc) will not be of God. It is not a disciple’s job to judge them. In fact, we may not be able to discern what is good and what is not. A disciple’s job is to grow and bear his or her own fruit. God can tell the difference in weeds and wheat, and He will take care of the weeds eventually.” Matthew recorded the disciples’ question to help them and all future disciples work without too much distress when things disturb us within the Church. When we see what appears to us to be evil we should not be distracted from our own growth or take it to mean God is not in charge.
But then I went out to take a picture of grass and weeds growing together to use for this meditation. You see it above! That sparked another layer of meaning. Wheat is a grass. Even to the trained eye of a farmer, grass looks alike as it begins to grow. You cannot tell a wheat plant from alfalfa from barley from Johnson grass (an insidious weed where I live). But as a plant matures to the point of forming seed, you can tell the weeds from the wheat. Each plant bears seed of itself. As weeds grow to maturity you can not only tell they are weeds, you can know they will bear seed of themselves: in this case, evil will beget evil; goodness will create goodness. I took that to be a further consolation to me—and measuring stick for myself: when I experience difficulty in my parish or in the larger Church, I need to ask myself: is this activity or interest or goal of mine of God or not—is it bearing good seed of the fruits of the Spirit or is it not? Hmmm. Maybe sometimes I can’t tell if I am weeds or wheat.
But then a third meaning of the parable came to me that ties with the Old Testament reading for today. The reading says in part, “The Lord, the Lord, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity, continuing his kindness for a thousand generations, and forgiving wickedness and crime and sin; yet not declaring the guilty guiltless, but punishing children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generation for their fathers’ wickedness!”
I remembered from my farming background, there is a wisdom in wheat. It not only spreads by seed. It also forms great masses of many fine roots that spread out in the soil. Weeds are choked out through several generations by wheat. The good grass wins! It just keeps growing until the weeds have no bare soil to give their next generation life. As the Old Testament reading says, evil lasts in its effects for awhile, but the good seed planted by God continues creating goodness for “a thousand generations.”
Pope Francis, when he named numerous “weeds” in the Church today (Chapter Two of the Joy of the Gospel) also noted the power of goodness to prevail and the importance of not being overly influenced by evil. He encourages us to persevere. He refers to this parable and says,
“The joy of the Gospel is such that it cannot be taken away from us by anyone or anything. The evils of our world—and those of the Church—must not be excuses for diminishing our commitment and our fervor. Let us look upon them as challenges which can help us to grow….Our faith is challenged to discern how wine can come from water and how wheat can grow in the midst of weeds…Christian triumph is always a cross, yet a cross which is at the same time a victorious banner borne with aggressive tenderness against the assaults of evil. The evil spirit of defeatism is brother to the temptation to separate, before its time, the wheat from the weeds; it is the fruit of an anxious and self-centered lack of trust.” (Evangelii Gaudium, paragraphs 84-45)
Prayer:
“Lord, help me remember I am meant to be wheat in the Kingdom. My job is to grow and bear fruit. Help me to persevere, so that I can take my place with others to gradually let goodness triumph. Help me to not be discouraged when weeds seem all around. Let me trust You to always be in charge of YOUR Kingdom.”
