Sunday 23rd July 2023 - Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Wisdom 12:13,16-19/ Psalm 85(86)/ Romans 8:26-27/ Matthew 13:24-43

In the Gospel today the agricultural theme from last week is continued. Even today people can understand the concept of a germinating seed and the problems that weeds can cause although it was much more clearly understood by the people who heard Jesus preach it first-hand. The advantage we have is two thousand years of prayerful consideration that can lead us to a deep understanding of what Jesus is telling us and how it is relevant to us today.

The Word of God is the good wheat that is sown throughout the world. As we heard last week it is sown everywhere, in good soil and in bad, on pathways and rocky ground. It is up to us to prepare the good soil to give the seed of faith the best chance to grow strong and tall. Even then the enemy will sow bad seed, darnel, amongst the good seed. As with many weeds the darnel grows as well as, if not better than, the carefully selected and cared for wheat. Darnel, in its early growth, will mimic the wheat it is sown amongst making it difficult to spot and get rid of. As it matures the darnel turns black and is poisonous causing sickness and hallucinations if consumed.

The enemy we are warned about is the devil who is hell bent on ruling over our passing world eager to damage and destroy souls who are searching for the love and compassion of God. The darnel is the bad seed of evil sown in the world by the devil. We can see it in many places in the evil perpetrated by people, in wars, conflicts, exploitation of others and of creation. We see it in greed leading to the gross imbalance between those who have and those who have not. We even see it in the heart of the Church with the appalling abuse scandals that have occurred.

The temptation is to see people as either good or bad, or to see ourselves as good or bad, when the truth is that we all have the darnel of evil sown within the fields of the wheat of faith within us. As individuals and collectively we are not good at recognising the growth of the darnel in our wheat fields until it has turned to a dark colour and has become obvious and poisonous. The darnel of evil within us and within humanity is effective at disguising itself as healthy growth until it may be too late. Many of the things that society is pursuing are promulgated as good and worthy actions when in fact they are far from God’s plan. For example, some lead to the destruction of precious human life when it is no longer valued and some to the devaluing of the sacred relationship of marriage between a man and a woman.

How do we overcome the evil darnel that has been sown within ourselves and throughout the world? We need to be able to recognise it for what it is before it has taken hold of us. We can only do this if we are living according to the mind of God. To live according to God’s plan is to fulfil the will of God given in the two shorter parables at the end of today’s gospel. That the Church, like the mustard seed, grows into a place that provides shelter from evil. That our faith grows and spreads like yeast causing a dramatic growth in dough.

One of the messages from our scripture readings today is the mercy and compassion of God. There is a contrast between the good and bad, evil and wickedness, but God shows endless patience giving us time to weed out the evil sown in our souls. In the first reading we hear that God is slow to be angered and is abounding in mercy. We find this mercy from God through prayer. The second reading gives us great confidence in prayer. We might think that our prayer is not always heard but in fact God knows exactly what we need from him. This may not be what we think we need, not what we are asking for but will ultimately ensure that we overcome evil and achieve salvation. Paul tells us in the second reading that the Holy Spirit expresses our prayer from within us in a way that we could never put into words. The pleas put buy the Holy Spirit on our behalf will always be according to the mind of God. The Spirit of Christ is praying within us and is an advocate for us. We might find ourselves concentrating too much on prayers of petition and forgetting those of praise, repentance, and thanks. There is nothing wrong with praying for our everyday needs and those of others, but we must not forget that those needs are bound up in living this temporal life when what we need is help in reaching our everlasting life not forgetting to praise and thank God for all we have and to be sorry for our failures.

We are reminded today that there is evil sown amongst us, it is good at disguising itself and pretending to be good and wholesome. Through prayer, prayer supported by the Holy Spirit within us, prayer corresponding to the mind of God, we will recognise this evil and be able to weed it out allowing our faith to grow strong. We know that the world contains both good and bad, the Church contains good and bad, we individuals have our elements of good and bad. The mind of God is that the seed of his word will overcome the evil sown in the world and through his mercy and compassion it will grow effectively, that his Church will provide shelter for the vulnerable and the yeast of faith will permeate throughout creation fulfilling his intention for it.

God Bless Brendan.