Yet again Our Lord teaches us by way of parables, and again with an agrarian image of weeds and wheat that grow side by side in the field. The parable points us to the disconcerting reality that here on earth good and evil exist side by side. He reminds us that in our human experience there is this tension between good and evil which is found everywhere at every level, in our families, in our social groups, in our parishes, in the Church and within ourselves.
St. Francis De Sales said that there is a “civil war” that goes on within each of us. Divine love exists alongside self-love. The Church herself is holy and sinful. She is spotless and tainted. She is not a community of saints but a community of sinners striving to become saints. St. Augustine, who certainly knew something of the tension between sin and grace, said that we are “peccatores in re, sancti in spe.” [Sinners in reality and saints in hope]. It is a very human organization but also the garden of God’s grace. [H.Nouwen] The Catechism itself states “In everyone the weeds of sin will still be mixed with the good wheat of the Gospel until the end of time.” We should not be scandalized by this. Perfection is found only in heaven. Only God is perfect.
The parable also points us to God who is the master in the parable. He allows the weeds and wheat to grow together until harvest. Like the master in the parable, God does not intervene hastily to remove the wheat but waits with “the boundless patience of a father and the inexhaustible trust of a mother,” [Angelo Card. Comastri]
God never gives up on us. Until the last moment of any life there is the potential to sin as well as to repent. God is patient with us through our foibles and through the dark times. We will indeed be judged at the end of our life but the Lord in his mercy never tires of giving us opportunities to change, to repent, to grow in holiness. We must learn this patience regarding the sins and foibles of others. We should be slow to judge, wary of jumping to conclusions, pointing an accusing finger, or writing someone off. After all…
There is so much good in the worst of us And so much bad in the best of us. That it behooves none of us To talk about the rest of us.
The human experience is a mixture of weeds and wheat. We are “peccatores in re, sancti in spe.”
