🙏 SUNDAY INSIGHTS - THE 16TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME 🙏

First Reading - Wisdom 12:13,16-19 

Second Reading - Romans 8:26-27 

Gospel - Matthew 13:24-43

A Bishop was sailing for Europe on one of the great transatlantic ocean liners. When he went on board, he found that another passenger was to share a cabin with him. After unpacking his bags, he went to the purser and inquired if he could leave his gold watch and other valuables in the ship’s safe. He explained that he had just met the man who was to occupy the other berth in his cabin and he was afraid that the man might not be trustworthy. The purser smiled, accepted the valuables and remarked, “It’s all right, Bishop, I’ll be very glad to take care of them for you. The other man has just been up here and left his valuables for the same reason!” — Today’s Gospel reminds us that we should not judge others hastily. There is a lot of good in the worst of us and a lot of evil in the best of us. In other words, the best of us are still “weeds” in God’s garden.

Today’s readings tell us about a very patient and compassionate God Who is hopeful that the so-called “weeds” among us will be converted, and that we should not be in a hurry to eliminate such elements from the Church, or society, or the family, on the basis of unwarranted and hasty judgment.

Today’s first reading reminds us of God’s tolerance and merciful patience. God is forbearing because He loves all that He has made (11:17-12:8) and because He is the sovereign master of His great power (12:9-22). The Book of Wisdom, written a century before Christ in Alexandria by a pious Jew, shows us a merciful and patient God rather than the strict, angry, and judgmental God presented in the book of Genesis. Today’s passage tells us that God exercises leniency and clemency: “But though You are master of might, You judge with clemency, and with much lenience You govern us.” The emphasis on God’s forbearance underlies this reading. The God shown in this reading is so powerful and wise that He need not be vengeful and quick to punish. This God can afford to let His enemies live, for they can never prevail, and, given time, might repent.

The second reading reminds us that how helpless we are on our own but shows us how the Spirit of God nevertheless empowers us. The Spirit prays within us and enables us to pray in accordance with the Father’s will. Paul tells us that when things are not going well, when we do not even know how to pray, when our weakness in whatever form is overcoming us, the Spirit moves in and takes over. St. Paul understands well the power and centrality of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Christian. The real message of this reading is that we should be patient with ourselves, because even at our worst moments the Holy Spirit is there guiding us, acting in us, and bringing us along, though we may not recognize His action.

Today’s Gospel contains three parables, namely the parable of the mustard seed, parable of the yeast and the parable of the wheat and weed. The parables of the mustard seed and yeast tells us how God’s kingdom, or His rule, grows in the human heart and in human lives from a very small beginning to fulness, through the power of the Holy Spirit. The parable of the wheat and weeds tells us how and why evil coexists with good in the world and how we should treat the evildoers.

The “weeds” among the wheat in the parable are a variety of tares known as “bearded darnel.” They resemble wheat plants so closely that it is impossible to distinguish the one from the other until the ears of seed appear. By that time, the wheat and darnel roots are so intertwined that the tares cannot be weeded out without plucking the wheat out with them. At the end of the harvest the tares must be removed from the wheat by hand, because they are slightly poisonous. Sowing them in the wheat field was a crude way for an enemy to take revenge on a farmer. The weeds in the parable stand for unrepentant sinners, people whose priority is themselves, who use others for their own advancement or pleasure, instead of serving them. These unrepentant sinners, unless they cooperate with God’s grace, repent, and change their lives, will end up in Hell, “the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.” The wheat stands for the righteous, those who have resisted the seductions of evil, repented of their sins, and battled against selfishness in order to follow Jesus Christ.

Dear friends, firstly, we need to be patient with ourselves. We may not get everything done perfectly this week, but so what? Then we must be patient with others – those who annoy us by the way they drive their cars, those whose opinions differ from ours, those who make too much noise and disturb us, and those who make our spiritual progress more difficult by their bad example and counter-witnessing. Let’s practice patience, remembering that, in the end, it is God who controls. Let us patiently and lovingly treat the “weeds” in our society as our brothers and sisters and do all in our power to put them back on the right road to Heaven, especially by our good example and our fervent prayer for their conversion.

This parable was told so that we might not go around judging others as “weeds” or wheat. Judgment is the function of God the Father and His angels. Instead, the parable asks us to take a close look at our own life with the understanding that, with God’s grace, one can judge one’s own heart, then repent and bear good fruit. It is a time to look at our own sins and at the way we conduct our own life, then to make a decision about our own repentance so that, with God’s grace, we can turn around and bear fruit for Jesus. Our Gospel lesson asks us whether we are secure in our Faith life. Are we secure in the knowledge that one day we will be judged as wheat or “weed”? How often have we been a “weed” in the garden of the Lord? Would we, knowing what we know now, like to have been plucked up at those times? God is so merciful that He allows evil to exist in order that what is good may grow. He allows evil to exist because He can turn it into good. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, God can change even the ugliest thorn into a blossom of Faith. In God’s field we have two responsibilities: to grow in grace as we do His will, and to share His Word and love with others.