The Gospel during mass today was the parable of the wheat
and weeds. It brought back a memory of a day over 50 years ago when I was working
with my dad in our vegetable garden behind our house. I didn’t realize until much later in my life
just how much of a brilliantly simple man my dad was!
I was about 11 or 12 years old and as I said we were out in
the back yard working in the garden. He wanted me to help pull the weeds. There
were some pretty flowers that he was pulling out and cursing at them because
they were weeds. I asked him, “Isn’t
this the same flower that you grow in the front flower beds? They’re pretty, and Mom loves them. Why are you pulling them out of the garden?” He replied, “If it isn’t what we planted, no
matter how beautiful it is, it’s a weed, because it can take over the whole
garden and the vegetables won’t grow or get as big as we want them to, so it
doesn’t belong here.”
Sin is like that. It can be quite beautiful and seductive,
but it is never what God intended to be in His garden.
In parables throughout the gospels, Jesus tells us of many
ways that we have to choose between living joyfully with God forever and being
forever separated from Him, in great pain over our loss.
The special spin that Jesus puts on this question of our
choice is that we have a whole lifetime to make it in. God provides us with all
that we need to choose Him and to make that choice concrete in our life rather
than just a vague wish or orientation, and we must make that one central choice
of our life in terms of the small daily choices that inch us closer to God or
away from Him.
While the "harvesters" in today’s parable are
able to tell the difference between the weeds and the wheat, we must
ordinarily remain in some uncertainly about whether we truly have chosen God
enough, whether we have loved Him enough. Any certainty about whether we are
"saved" or not can be a form of self-delusion and lead to pride,
laziness, and a fatal assumption that we are "good enough." That sort
of thing can be deadly in our human relationships, and it is no different in
our relationship with God.
I simply do not know whether I am weed or wheat while I am
alive, and the fact is that I am both --- but which is the dominant side of who
I am? While I am responsible for the choice, it is up to God to decide what I
have actually chosen. And that is where the virtue of hope comes in.
The kingdom of heaven starts small, as small as the
smallest seed you can see. A still, quiet voice in the human heart, speaking
and reminding us that God is always present. Sometimes there will be no sign of
it on the outside. But within, there is the yearning, the striving for heaven
here and now.
But no matter how small it starts, with gardening and
attendance, paying attention to God and what is important, with the slightest
care, the smallest amount of devotion, it can grow by leaps and bounds -- a
seedling, a shrub, a bush, a tree. And when it has grown, when we've allowed it
to take root, it has another supernatural property -- it summons, from every
corner of the earth and sky, those who would join. People can see the blessing
of it; people can feel it’s comforting presence. And they are drawn to it. They
are drawn to the cool shade of it on a hot summer day.
When we allow grace to work, we allow the Kingdom of Heaven
to take root. And this kingdom is not for us to hoard and enjoy alone. It has
as its chief characteristic the need to be shared, the desire to grow to
include everyone.
When you open yourself up to God, don’t be surprised that
others see it in you and start to want to be near you. Do not underestimate the
ability God has given you to change your part of the world into a corner of
heaven.
