Breaking Open the Word
July 19 - 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Introduction
In the First Reading, this passage proclaims the power and goodness of the one and only God. His power, however, does not make Him an unjust tyrant. On the contrary, He is always righteous and just and dispenses His justice with mercy and kindness. By His example, God taught His covenant people that compassion, mercy, and forgiveness define righteousness.
We find the same teaching in the New Testament in the ministry of Christ. Our merciful Father sent Jesus the Messiah to redeem humankind and to fulfill the hope of the inspired writer of the Book of Wisdom. He forgives our venial sins through the Penitential Rite of the Mass and the Eucharist. And in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, God provides a way to forgive our mortal sins and restore us to fellowship with Him. The Catechism assures us: "There are no limits to the mercy of God, but anyone who deliberately refuses to accept his mercy by repenting, rejects the forgiveness of his sins and the salvation offered by the Holy Spirit. Such hardness of heart can lead to final impenitence and eternal loss" (CCC 1864)
In today's Responsorial Psalm, we proclaim that God is slow to anger and abounding in mercy and kindness. His patience with sinful humanity teaches us that God desires repentance, not vengeance, and the salvation of the people of all nations.
In today's Second Reading, St. Paul promises that the Holy Spirit is ready to intercede with God the Father for us when we call upon Him for help. He will always intervene for us, according to the will of the Father, even when we cannot articulate our need for His intervention. All Christians long for union with the Most Holy Trinity in our final redemption and the hope of living the glory of the beatific vision.
We also look forward to the promise of our resurrection when we receive our glorified bodies. This great hope is almost too much to be able to comprehend in our limited natural state, but God the Holy Spirit helps us, prays with us, and intercedes for us in "groanings" and "with sighs too deep for words" to receive this final and eternal gift. Every child who truly loves his family longs to be at home with his loved ones. Our "family" is the Most Holy Trinity, and our souls long to be at home with Him. The Holy Spirit enables Christians to approach the throne of God the Father and to speak to Him like a little child to a loving Father.
Gospel Explained
The question from last week’s gospel still persists: Jesus, why do you speak in parables? Jesus’ use of parables wasn’t as easy as simple illustrations of spiritual truths, like say the sermon on the mount. Jesus explained that He used the parables so that the hearts of those rejecting it would not be hardened further. The same sun that softens wax hardens clay; and so the very same gospel message that humbles the honest heart and leads to repentance may also harden the heart of the dishonest listener and confirm them in their path of disobedience. The parable conceals the truth from those who are either too lazy to think or blinded to see by their prejudices. It puts the responsibility fairly and squarely on the individual. It reveals truth to the one who desires truth; it conceals truth from those who do not wish to see the truth.
Notice today’s gospel reading comes immediately after last week’s lesson of the seed and the sower. Recall the good seed planted in rich soil, yielding 100 or 60 or 30 fold. Now there’s a new twist- what if someone were to secretly sow weeds in that good soil? Their intention was to destroy the whole crop, to cause the good seed to be pulled up as collateral damage. Isn’t that just like the devil to do that to God’s people? It was bad enough that some of the seeds cast among the thorns got choked off by the the world’s riches and temptations.
The devil doesn’t care one bit about his so called friends (the weeds), he just wants all of God’s good people destroyed. The poisonous darnel weed that was sown looks exactly like wheat when they both first appear, deceiving everyone. But the wheat has now grown and the grain appears, and the weeds have now been obviously detected, they look very different, fooling no one. The servants recognize this and report it to the master. By this time all the roots are well grown and tangled together, so the master’s decision is wise to wait a little longer for the harvest, to preserve the wheat crop. It’s now easy to identify the weeds and pull them out first. So will it be in the final judgment, the angels will collect out all who cause others to sin and all evildoers, and throw them into the fiery furnace. The time for mercy will be over, only justice is left.
Today's Theme
Today’s Theme: God is Just, Merciful and Patient
Our Lord God dispenses justice to both the righteous and the wicked, but even those who defy Him and disobey His commandments can hope for His mercy if they turn to Him in repentance. In the First Reading, the inspired writer of the Book of Wisdom proclaims the power and goodness of the one righteous and just God. The Lord dispenses His justice with mercy and kindness, and by His example, He teaches His covenant people that the righteousness He requires of us must be defined by compassion, mercy, and forgiveness.
The slaves and the harvesters are two different groups since the master told the slaves in Matthew 13:30 that He would instruct the "harvesters" at the time of the harvest to collect the weeds first. Notice the contrast between "the children of the Kingdom" and the "children of the evil one." Once again, Jesus taught that there was no middle ground—a person was either for or against Him. God is just, merciful, and patient; He does not force us to accept citizenship in the Kingdom and His gift of eternal salvation. If a person has not chosen to be a child of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, he has chosen to be a child of the devil (1 Jn 3:10)!
The Jews of Jesus’ time thought they were the wheat and the Gentiles were the weeds. That’s why they were shocked when at times Jesus would say that tax collectors, sinners and the lowly would enter Heaven before them, and they would be left out in the dark weeping.
Even for followers of Jesus today, there can be disagreement on who are the wheat and who are the weeds. Non-Catholic Christians sometime think that Catholics are going to hell for worshiping Mary and wafers of bread and wine. Catholics sometime think Protestants are going to hell for not believing in the Eucharist and confusing honoring Mary with worshiping her. Both sides think they are the wheat and the others are the weeds. But the field is not this church or that church, but the world and the distinction between the evil-doers and the righteous. Like the weeds that grew among the wheat, like the yeast that refused to raise the dough, they will be thrown out.
Jesus makes clear that we simply cannot be certain who is “in” or who is “out.” In fact, God’s judgment about these matters will take many by surprise. Thank God it is not up to us! We can leave the weeding to the angels, and get on with the mission Jesus has given us — proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God drawing near.
In the sermon on the mount, Jesus said that God makes the sun rise on the bad and the good, and sends rain down on the just and the unjust. Those weeds received the same sun and rain as the wheat. And the ultimate, while He was on the cross, where pure goodness met pure evil, He, fully aware of the maximum evil that man could be, He forgave them.
Theme in our Life Today
This parable is a lesson on how we approach evil in the world. It’s about being able to comprehend the bigger picture of the reality that the Kingdom is already here, but evil is still present and will exist until the final judgment.
Jesus could see the world was filled with good and evil; He encountered evil many times. In the three parables in today’s gospel, the one common thread is patience. Waiting for the weeds to grow and be collected and burned, waiting for the yeast to do its work, waiting for the mustard tree to grow. The tree took years, the wheat took a season, and the yeast took hours. All required patience and could not be rushed, just like God is patient with us.
The story of the wheat and weeds can also be applied to us. Doing good deeds in this life, caring for and helping others, this is the work that Jesus said we should do, storing up treasures in heaven. This is the wheat that we are producing, yielding 100 or 60 or 30 fold, and it is good. The weeds are our sins, the failures in our lives that don’t produce anything good. As the parable goes, the weeds and the wheat at first look the same, and they are mingled together. Sin looks pretty good too at first. But as it all comes to fruition it becomes obvious what is good grain and what are useless weeds. So with us, as we grow in time we see the good that we have done, but also looking back we see the sins we committed that produced nothing good in our lives, they stand out and get easier to see. We all live with both through our lives, nobody’s perfect. There is a certain element of purgatory here, in that those weeds of ours will need to be burned off until there is only the wheat of our good deeds.
We can also compare ourselves to the mustard plant. We start out as a tiny little 2 cell being, eventually growing into an adult. By the good that we do in this life we can be compared to the nests in the mustard tree: all our good deeds create a home for good will among others, and people are drawn to us like those birds to the tree.
Again we can be compared to the yeast that is added to the flour. In this life we have a free will to do good and produce much that the world so greatly needs. Or not. Did you ever try to bake something where the yeast was bad, and while you waited patiently for the dough to rise to many times its size it just stays a flat, wet glob? And what can you do with the dough when the yeast refused to raise it? It is thrown out, it is good for nothing and can’t be salvaged. On the other hand, isn’t it amazing when good yeast makes that gooey little glob of ingredients rise to a huge ball of dough? And even if you punch it down, it will rise back up.
Imagine how pleased God is with us if we use our life for good and increase His kingdom to many times from where we started, even when life punches us down sometimes. We will be His joy, we will shine like the sun in His kingdom, just like how we admire that beautiful warm tall loaf of bread taken out of the oven.
Prepare for Sunday
To Prepare for this Sunday’s Liturgy of the Word, consider the following:
1. Think on this gospel passage as you go about with your life, doing good deeds
2. Pick some weeds out of a flower garden, but be careful not to pull up the flowers
3. Bake a big, beautiful loaf of bread
4. As Deacon Gerard would say, “go to confession!” Get right with God.
Let us pray:
Father, we ask for clarity in understanding the parables.
Just as the disciples sought to know why You spoke in parables,
we too desire to grasp the profound truths hidden within these stories.
Fill us with the Holy Spirit, guiding us
as we navigate through the messages You convey.
May we ask the right questions and seek understanding
that transforms our hearts and spirits.
Amen.