Peas, Pigweed, and Prayer

Peas, Pigweed, and Prayer

Back in the day when I owned a home in the Catoctin hills of Northern Virginia, one summer I decided to plant a garden. I knew nothing about the endeavor, but I did check a book out of the library.…

friarmusings

The promise here isn’t that Christian faith prevents hardship; the promise is that we are unconditionally loved by God in spite of our poor choices. Some decisions we’ll get right, others wrong, and still others we won’t know whether we were right or wrong for months or years to come. But we still need to make them. We live in a world colored by ambiguity. A world where the only absolute is found in absolution. And so we pray certain the Spirit knows our heart.

What to Do with the Weeds in the Wheat Field…

Perhaps Wisdom’s image of God
can help us understand the farmer in the gospel.
He sows good seeds but a competitor comes along
and spoils his hard work, sowing weeds in the farmer’s wheat fields.
When the wheat and the weeds sprout,
Some counsel him to pull up the weeds but, curiously,
this farmer says “No. Let the weeds be…”

Bumblebees and Wheat

RELATED HOMILIES:
The Non-violent Farmer (2011)
Patient Vigilance (2017)
When the Weeds Come (2020)

If you take a bumblebee and place it at the bottom of a glass tumbler, it will never find its way out. Even though the top of the glass is perfectly open, the bee will keep searching and exploring until exhaustion and eventually die in the glass. This is because instinct has programmed the bumblebee to search horizontally. Therefore once in the tumbler, it keeps exploring all the walls at the bottom. It keeps searching for a way out where none exists, and in the process it destroys itself. Now the glass provides a perfectly open and direct way of escape but the bee never sees it, because nature has directed it to constantly look around but prevented it from looking up. We are not like bumblebees. We can search in all directions. We can explore all possible avenues. It is important for us to do so, because if we were to limit ourselves to only one perspective, we could end up like that bee, continually striving towards the negative and the impossible until we exhaust ourselves.

The Kingdom of Heaven

The growth of the kingdom of heaven in our hearts will meet a lot of obstacles. The heart as the centre is subject to the lures of desire. Like the enemy who planted the weed at night, these lures of desire take place whenever we are caught off our guard. Our desires clash without our awareness.  There is no warning! The resultant effect is to live through life struggling to preserve the word sown in our hearts. The sower tells his workers not to uproot the weed in order not to affect the good seed. Hence, the constant threat to the growth of the kingdom of heaven in our hearts.

Weeds Among the Wheat

Today I want to speak with you about a real concern we are experiencing in the twenty-first century Roman Catholic Church. This concern confuses our children. This concern steers people away when they want to inquire about the Church. The concern is the negative things that are written or said about Pope Francis, and many of the leaders of the Church, particularly the Bishops of the United States.

How could God let this happen? People need to put their f aith in the Church. How could God allow some who claim to be the real Catholics continually discredit

Pope Francis, bishops who are not radical conservatives, the American Church, and so forth?

Saint or Ain’t?

Saint or Ain’t? A Homily for the 16th Sunday of the Year - Community in Mission

We live in difficult times for the Church; from many sectors the very legitimate cry for reform goes up frequently. Beyond the sexual abuse scandal there are also deep concerns regarding the uncertain trumpet of Catholic preaching, lukewarm and nominal Catholics, an overall lack of self-discipline among Catholics, and a lack of disciplining by the … Continue reading "Saint or Ain’t? A Homily for the 16th Sunday of the Year"

Community in Mission

Guidance comes in four steps.

1. Wake Up 
2. Wise Up
3. Wait Up
4. Wash Up

Hope

As we continue watching the anarchist agenda unfold before our eyes, our readings today provide us with some hope and a good challenge.  The hope comes in two forms.  First, there is the hope for those who are on the wrong path.  Wisdom tells us that because God is the master of might, He rules with leniency and judges with clemency.  Does God not have the power to put an end to the nonsense we are witnessing?  Of course, He does.  Then why are we not seeing it?

To Tolerate or Not?

To Tolerate or Not?

Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A There is a wonderful legend of how Abraham offered hospitality to a visitor, as was his cus...

michaelckw.blogspot.com

This is the message of hope that we find in today’s parable. The parable of the wheat and the darnel reminds us that our families, our communities, our society and even our Church will always be a mixture of good and bad. On this side of heaven, nothing is perfect. The more astonishing truth is that the good and the bad that we see around us also resides within each of us. Before we try to rid society and the world completely of the evil we see, we should begin with ourselves. Let me assure you that this is a life-long project. I should know. I’m still working on my issues with the grace of God.

Throughout our lives we must strive against the evil that not only surrounds us but that which lurks within our hearts. We must never resign ourselves to sin or retreat from the battle. Although we must constantly strive against evil, let us not be deluded to think that we will be able to rid ourselves completely of all sin and our propensity to sin, or that we can create a perfect Utopian society. We need to remember that Utopia does not exist because, save for Jesus Christ and His mother Mary, the world is made up of imperfect individuals. In fact, the word Utopia comes from two Greek words which means, no place.

Clergy E-Notes

Jesus illustrates the Father’s wisdom to us: the Father does not wish to wipe away evil-doers, because He does not wish to harm the faith of good people. The Father at the same time gives evil-doers time to repent. Let us not judge those who are in sin, but continually invite them back to forgiveness while there is still time.

The first reading tells us that God has filled His children with good hope. Let us pray that our hearts will be filled with a renewed hope for an end to abortion in Canada.

Let us not direct an overabundance of energies in the pro-life struggle toward combat with pro-death advocates. The master in today’s parable wisely directs his slaves to allow the wheat and the weeds to grow together until harvest time, when each plant will attain its end.

PRO-LIFE INTERCESSION

We pray for the enemies of the pro-life cause. May God have mercy on them and grant them conversion of heart. We pray to the Lord …

Transforming Yeast

God respects people. He knows that temptation is often stronger than their good intentions and they need time to find and to choose steadily what is good. The second is that God is Patient. The reconciliation of so many contradictory groups, forces and cultural currents active in the world will be attained only at the end of time. In the meantime, we are not to label any of them as “the” good ones and “the” bad ones.

Glorious Freedom

Bottom line: We’re in a spiritual war. We need allies and we need to become strong soldiers.

There are good reasons to leave weeds alone. First, you and I may not see the difference between useful and useless plants. Many people consider dandelions a nuisance. Others however harvest the leaves for a spring salad and even use the flowers as part of a vegetable stew.

Weeds – plants we consider useless – might turn out to have a good use. Furthermore an extremely valuable plant – wheat – once grew wild until our ancestors learned to domesticate it.

Something similar can happen in our souls. Weeds can transform into something valuable. Let me illustrate: A certain man had a terrible temper. His outbursts of rage were destroying his family. He went to a priest for help. The priest pointed out that his tendency to anger had a good side. The man was surprised because he did not see anything good in his temper, which often went out of control. But the priest explained that God gave him the energy of anger and wants him to use that energy to protect and defend his family. When the man went home, he talked with his wife and children. He asked forgiveness for the outbursts, but also said he wanted to form a strong family – a family that would withstand the attacks against it.

RELATED HOMILIES:

2014:  Life in the Spirit Week 3
2011:  Himself the Kingdom
2008:  Allow Them to Grow Together
2005:  Distinguishing Wheat from Weeds
2002:  The Fiery Furnace
1999:  Jesus’ Teaching Concerning Hell

Remove Your Weeds Instead of Judging Other’s Weeds

Did you ever form a poor opinion of someone and discover later that you were wrong? Anytime we judge others we need to be aware that we may not have the full picture and so we may not be fair in our judgments of others. The weeds or darnel that some enemy sowed among the wheat in the parable taught by Jesus today (Matt 13:24-43) looked very like the wheat in their early growth so that it was really impossible to decide properly which was wheat and which was weed. Aren’t we blessed that God has the bigger picture and not our puny judgments! God is much more merciful and patient than we are.

Hell

Today’s First Reading (Wisdom 12:13,16-19) stresses God’s parental concern. We are reminded that God ‘cares for everything’ is ‘lenient to all’ and ‘mild in judgment’. God has given us hope because after sin God offers the grace for us to repent. In similar terms the Responsorial Psalm (Psalm 85) speaks of God as ‘good and forgiving’. God is a ‘God of mercy and compassion, slow to anger, abounding in love and truth’. In our sinfulness we pray that God will ‘turn and take pity on us’. We pray in this way because we know that our lives matter. What we do matters, to ourselves and to others. So we pray for the strength to change so that we can live a free, creative and love-giving life now and for all eternity.

In Our Weakness

In all the happenstance of history and space, the gospel tells us that the good lasts. It is worth the vast expenditure of matter and energy to gain the good. It is worth all the misfortune to reap the benefit. Fruit grows amid the weeds. Life and waste walk hand in hand. Gain and loss are partners. But the loss, the waste, is endured for the sake of the yield.

What is more, the fruit starts so small. Like one act of love, one time of kindness, one moment of courage, growth is imperceptible in the seeding. The mustard seed, once so tiny, becomes a great shrub, the home to wayfaring birds of passage. So it is in Jesus’ other analogy for the reign of God: a bit of yeast permeates and quickens the batch of flour.

Ants, Grasshoppers and Starfish

In a field one summer’s day a Grasshopper was hopping about, chirping and singing to its heart’s content. An Ant passed by, bearing along with great toil an ear of corn he was taking to the nest. “Why not come and chat with me,” said the Grasshopper, “instead of toiling and moiling in that way?” “I am helping to lay up food for the winter,” said the Ant, “and recommend you to do the same.” “Why bother about winter?” said the Grasshopper, “we have got plenty of food at present.” But the Ant went on its way and continued its toil. When the winter came the Grasshopper had no food, and found itself dying of hunger, while it saw the ants distributing every day corn and grain from the stores they had collected in the summer. Then the Grasshopper knew: “It is best to prepare for the days of necessity!”

This is a good fable to remember, especially during the summer. When it comes to the parable of the weeds and the wheat, Jesus is trying to explain to us a couple important life lessons. First, he is explaining to us that although good and evil coexist in the world, only the good will make it to heaven. Second, he is asking us to therefore consider the areas in our lives that are like the weeds and the areas in our lives that are like the wheat. Are we like the ant in Aesop’s fable who does the hard work today to prepare for tomorrow or are we like the grasshopper, putting off to tomorrow what we should be doing today?

On Journey to the Kingdom of God

Thoughts on the Sunday readings: The Grain, the Weeds and Tobit (Sixteenth Sunday – A)

This last week I read a book entitled, Tobit’s Dog written by Michael N. Richard.  The book is a retelling of the Book of Tobit set in the segregated South of the Depression era.  The Book of Tobit…

The Alternate Path

In this Sunday’s gospel (Mt. 13:24-43), our Lord gives us three images of the Kingdom of God – the grain growing alongside the weeds, the growing mustard seed and the active yeast.  What is helpful is recognizing that all of these three images are in process, they are active.  We are on journey toward the Kingdom of God, we are not there yet, and not only that but all creation is also on journey toward the fullness of the Kingdom of God.  Last Sunday, in his Letter to the Romans (Rom. 8:18-23) St. Paul wrote, I consider that the sufferings of the present life cannot be compared with the Glory that will be revealed and given to us.  All creation is eagerly expecting the birth in glory of the children of God.  The resurrection, the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God is active; it is transforming us and all of creation also!