Most of us when we see a weed have the urge to pull it out. We view weeds as unsightly, as a threat to what is good, as making our lives and our lawns less than perfect. But they exist and despite our preferences. Even in drought times which many are experiencing these days they seem to flourish more than our plantings. When we do pull them out, they grow back.
Jesus in the parable of the wheat and the weed, in a very practical description of the environment within which Christian discipleship must exist, tells us that our mustard seed sized faith must live among the secular weeds of this world which is inhospitable even hostile to religion and moral truth. But ultimately he assures us that at harvest time judgment will come and the good will prevail for those who persevere.
It is a warning that we must always be on guard. There is evil in the world which if we allow it can choke off the growth of our faith through discouragement, anxiety and compromise. Evil comes in many flavors including pressures to accept ideologies we know are against the intentions of the Creator, to allow injustice to others for our narrow personal advantage, to seek vengeance rather than forgiveness and conversion. Among the destructive weeds in our day is the glorification of personal choice and radical individualism at the expense of the common good and personal responsibility. This evil has resulted in undercutting the moral fiber of families on which the stability of society is rooted.
The fact is that our lives are interlocked between good and evil, wheat and weeds. Even with the best of intentions we struggle in their midst. The Church instituted by Christ can help us maintain the strength that allows us to stand firm against the forces of evil by being strengthened by the sacrificial love of our Lord on the cross for our ultimate salvation.
Reflecting once in a while on what we believe and how well we are practicing it can help us avoid being choked off by the weeds of the world. As an examination of conscience I regularly reflect on the seven capital or deadly sins and how much am I giving into them: pride, covetousness or greed, lust or disrespect for the dignity of every person, anger, envy, sloth or spiritual indifference, and gluttony or dominance of material or pleasurable things.
To live amongst the wheat and weeds we need patience and we need humility.
Patience. What a test that is. In this technological age of instantaneous responses our expectations from machines can carry over into our expectations about others. Some of us are old enough to remember when in grocery stores the clerk would have to personally enter the price of each item. Now with scanners the lines move quickly but often not quick enough for some. Some of us remember when to travel from one place to another required driving through the center of each town along the way. Now the 80 miles an hour speed limit is to slow for some. This week I was driving through the beautiful countryside of our state trying to maintain the speed limit and thought back on the stamina of those who drove this same terrain before roads in horse pulled wagons. That took patience and hope.
We also need humility. Once we acknowledge the imperfections that are ours we can better accept the imperfections that are in others. We also need humility go slow in judging others. The standards we use may well be different from God’s. The fact is that we never have enough information about what is going on in another’s life, what crosses they bear, to judge fairly. We know this because we know that no one else knows us that well. We need humility to allow Christ to be the judge and to accept God’s will and God’s way even if it seems inconvenient or we don’t understand it.
My grandfather was a wonderful man, kind, sensitive with a dry sense of humor. I will always picture him sitting in an old rocker holding one of his grandchildren on his lap. In the last years of his life his personality changed. He would swear profusely, say terrible things to my grandmother, and disrupt the household. He was not himself. We knew that he had suffered a series of strokes. But those who met him for the first time in those later days would have viewed him and perhaps judged him in a different way from those of us who loved him. Was he wheat or weed? God knew and so did we.
Several centuries ago William Gladstone was prime minister of Great Britain. He once invited those who worked for him to a formal dinner with linen napkins and before each plate a small bowl in which to dip fingers to cleanse them. One man who had never been to such a dinner before picked up his finger bowl and drank from it. Some of the other guest reacted with horror, others snickered. Mr. Gladstone noting the innocent error of manners and the derision of the other guests picked up his finger bowl and drank from it. Patience and humility, Christ-like love, personified.
In the parable it is at harvest time, judgment time, when the wheat will be separated from the weeds. In the meantime we need to live amongst the weeds, stave off the forces of evil that tempt us, and live with the imperfections of others while asking forgiveness for our own. We can do so by focusing on the positive, deepening our relationship with Jesus Christ through his Church, and following the advice of St. Thomas a Kempis:” the things that we cannot change in ourselves or others, let us suffer patiently until God order things otherwise.”