SIXTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (YEAR A)
Wis 12:13,16-19; Ps 86; Rom 8:26-27; Mt 13:24-43 or Mt 13:24-30
COMMENTARY
The Mysteries of the Kingdom of God in Parables
Continuing to listen to Jesus’ teaching in parables, which began last week, we meditate today on the parable of the seed and the weeds. This is a very particular parable story, which has in the Gospel itself an explanation of the allegorical meaning of every detail. The whole thing aims to introduce every disciple to the three fundamental mysteries of the Kingdom of God being realized in Christ Jesus: the mystery of iniquity, divine patience, and the growth of the Kingdom to the end. To truly understand all this, we still need ears to listen not only attentively, but also wisely, with the disposition of “little ones” before God, to be amazed anew by His message for our concrete present life as disciples-missionaries of Christ.
1. “An Enemy Has Done This.” The Mystery of Iniquity in God’s Field.
The image of the enemy-sower of the weeds in Jesus’ parable will be something to admire. It is beautiful in its simplicity of detail (a single sentence of description) and profound in its theological and spiritual meanings: “While everyone was asleep his enemy came and sowed weeds all through the wheat, and then went off.” Unlike the sower of good seed, his enemy acts, “while everyone was asleep,” that is, at night, in darkness. Moreover, this antagonist is the one who, to use a Vietnamese proverbial expression, ném đá giấu tay “throws the stone and hides his hands.” In fact, “sowed weeds all through the wheat, and then went off.” Therefore, the workers in the field are in the dark, but the landlord knows and unmasks him with the authority of one who knows how to make informed judgments: “An enemy has done this.”
All this gives a glimpse of the reality of evil that opposes the action of the “Son of Man,” Jesus Christ, who sows the good seed of the Gospel in the field of the world. This evil reality is most often mysterious, incomprehensible from the human perspective: how did this or that situation happen? Why so much gratuitous evil that we hear more and more from everyday news? There are tragedies that cannot be explained by human weaknesses or sinful inclination alone. It is precisely “the mystery of iniquity,” the reality of the Evil One who systematically opposes, indeed wages war against, the work of God in Christ for humanity. Therefore, St. Paul exhorted the faithful with the words inspired by the Holy Spirit: “Put on the armor of God so that you may be able to stand firm against the tactics of the devil. For our struggle is not with flesh and blood but with the principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens” (Eph 6:11-12).
2. “Let Them Grow Together until Harvest.” The Mystery of Divine Patience
Faced with such an “in the field” situation, we are amazed by the recommendation that the “master” makes: “Let them grow together until harvest.” It is the mystery of God’s patience that sometimes appears incomprehensible and arouses such perplexity for the “good seeds” themselves, the “children of the Kingdom,” who suffer, willingly or unwillingly, from the weeds around them. Although the good seeds remain silent in the narrative, we can hear their cry in that moving cry of the early Christian martyrs in the inspired vision of the sacred author of the book of Revelation: “How long will it be, holy and true master, before you sit in judgment […]?” (Rev 6:10) This actually echoes the cry of the righteous in every time and place when faced with the mystery of God’s “silence”: “O Lord, how long will you look on? Restore my soul from their destruction, my very life from lions!” (Ps 35:17). And God’s explicit response in the book of Revelation, echoing the thought of the parable analyzed, will have to make us think: “Each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to be patient a little while longer until the number was filled of their fellow servants and brothers who were going to be killed as they had been” (Rev 6:11), that is, until the fulfillment of history, which will happen soon anyway. “They were told to be patient,” just as and together with God and Christ the Lord. This is not passive patience, however, but the active patience of an agile and wise farmer. Literally and metaphorically God continues to work with the earth, as expressed by the Psalmist: “You drench its plowed furrows, and level its ridges. With showers you keep it soft…” (Ps 65:11). All this is mainly for the healing of good seeds, but also for a miraculous transformation, peculiar only to God, from weeds into good plants! Here is the mystery of God’s patience who “so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life” (Jn 3:16). He reveals Himself patient, because of His very nature and because He is merciful to all mankind. He is never in a hurry to destroy, but always seeks to have “care of all things,” to make all things live and revive: “But though you are master of might, you judge with clemency, and with much lenience you govern us” (Wis 12:18; Reading 1).
And God’s servants, field workers, are all invited to learn and follow such divine patience in the life of faith and in the mission of divine evangelization in the world to which we are all called. He therefore exhorts St. James: “Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains. You too must be patient. Make your hearts firm, because the coming of the Lord is at hand” (Jas 5:7-8).
3. The Mystery of the Growth of the Kingdom until the End
The reason for patience is that God sees more the silent growth of good seeds than the arrogant multiplication of weeds: it is the gaze of the Master, of the One who holds all history in His hands. And the very growth of the Kingdom, despite all the opposition that wants to stifle it, represents the greatest mystery of human history. It is no accident that Christ stated with authority, “The gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it” (Mt 16:18), against His Church, which is the beginning and the seed of the Kingdom of God. It will thus be certain, at the end of time, the triumph of God’s faithful love that realizes with Christ and his disciples-collaborators his Kingdom in the field of the world.
Let us repeat, in conclusion, the inspiring prayer of Card. Ratzinger during the meditations on the ninth station (“Jesus falls for the third time”) of the Way of the Cross at the Colosseum in 2005, in which precisely the powerful image of the tares in the field is evoked, for a sincere examination of conscience of the whole Church but with a gaze full of faith and trust in Christ, the divine Sower, who always takes care of his “good seeds” in this world:
Lord, your Church often seems like a boat about to sink, a boat taking in water on every side. In your field we see more weeds than wheat. The soiled garments and face of your Church throw us into confusion. Yet it is we ourselves who have soiled them! It is we who betray you time and time again, after all our lofty words and grand gestures. Have mercy on your Church; within her too, Adam continues to fall. When we fall, we drag you down to earth, and Satan laughs, for he hopes that you will not be able to rise from that fall; he hopes that being dragged down in the fall of your Church, you will remain prostrate and overpowered. But you will rise again. You did stand up, you arose and you can also raise us up. Save and sanctify your Church. Save and sanctify us all. Amen.
Useful points to consider:
LEON XIV, Encyclical Letter on Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence, Magnifica Humanitas
210. The construction of a world in a state of perpetual conflict is an evil and must be named for what it is. This way of portraying our current situation may seem bleak or pessimistic, yet I consider it necessary to do so. The Christian perspective, however, is not limited to denouncing evil. We view history in the light of the crucified and risen Lord, to whom the Father has given “all authority in heaven and on earth” (Mt 28:18). We do not consider the present as a predetermined fate, but an opportunity for personal and collective conversion. Moreover, we believe in the power of the Kingdom, which grows from the tiny size of a mustard seed, which, once sown, sprouts and grows (cf. Mk 4:26-32). While the tumult of confusion is all around us, goodness grows silently from the earth. In the words of the prophet Isaiah: “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” (Is 43:19).
POPE FRANCIS, Apostolic Exhortation on the Proclamation of the Gospel in Today’s World, Evangelii Gaudium
24. The Church which “goes forth” is a community of missionary disciples who take the first step, who are involved and supportive, who bear fruit and rejoice. […] Such a community has an endless desire to show mercy, the fruit of its own experience of the power of the Father’s infinite mercy. […] Evangelization consists mostly of patience and disregard for constraints of time. Faithful to the Lord’s gift, it also bears fruit. An evangelizing community is always concerned with fruit, because the Lord wants her to be fruitful. It cares for the grain and does not grow impatient at the weeds. The sower, when he sees weeds sprouting among the grain does not grumble or overreact. He or she finds a way to let the word take flesh in a particular situation and bear fruits of new life, however imperfect or incomplete these may appear. The disciple is ready to put his or her whole life on the line, even to accepting martyrdom, in bearing witness to Jesus Christ, yet the goal is not to make enemies but to see God’s word accepted and its capacity for liberation and renewal revealed. […]
225. […] The Lord himself, during his earthly life, often warned his disciples that there were things they could not yet understand and that they would have to await the Holy Spirit (cf. Jn 16:12-13). The parable of the weeds among the wheat (cf. Mt 13:24-30) graphically illustrates an important aspect of evangelization: the enemy can intrude upon the kingdom and sow harm, but ultimately he is defeated by the goodness of the wheat.
278. Faith also means believing in God, believing that he truly loves us, that he is alive, that he is mysteriously capable of intervening, that he does not abandon us and that he brings good out of evil by his power and his infinite creativity. […] Let us believe the Gospel when it tells us that the kingdom of God is already present in this world and is growing, here and there, and in different ways: like the small seed which grows into a great tree (cf. Mt 13:31-32), like the measure of leaven that makes the dough rise (cf. Mt 13:33) and like the good seed that grows amid the weeds (cf. Mt 13, 24-30) and can always pleasantly surprise us. The kingdom is here, it returns, it struggles to flourish anew. Christ’s resurrection everywhere calls forth seeds of that new world; even if they are cut back, they grow again, for the resurrection is already secretly woven into the fabric of this history, for Jesus did not rise in vain. […]
POPE FRANCIS, Angelus, Saint Peter’s Square, Sunday, 19 July 2020
In today’s Gospel (cf. Mt 13:24-43) we once again encounter Jesus who is intent on speaking to the crowd in parables about the Kingdom of Heaven. I will reflect only on the first one, that of the weeds, through which Jesus helps us understand God’s patience, opening our hearts to hope.
Jesus narrates that, in the field where the good seed was sown, weeds also sprouted. This term sums up all the toxic vegetation that infests the soil. […].The servants then go to the master to understand where the weeds come from. He responds: “An enemy has done this!” (v. 28). […]
The servants’ intention is to eliminate evil immediately, that is, evil people. But the master is wiser, he sees farther. They must learn to wait because enduring persecution and hostility is part of the Christian vocation. Certainly, evil must be rejected, but those who do evil are people with whom it is necessary to be patient. This does not mean that type of hypocritical tolerance that hides ambiguity; but rather, justice tempered by mercy. If Jesus came to seek sinners more than the righteous, to cure the sick first before the healthy (cf. Mt 9:12-13), then our actions too as his disciples should be focused not on suppressing the wicked, but on saving them. Patience lies here.
Today’s Gospel presents two ways of acting and of experiencing history: on the one hand, the vision of the master who sees far; on the other, the perspective of the servants who see the problem. The servants care about a field without weeds; the master cares about good wheat. The Lord invites us to adopt his vision, one that is focused on good wheat, that knows how to protect it even amid the weeds. It is not those who are
always searching for others’ limitations and flaws who cooperate well with God but, rather, those who know how to recognize the good that silently grows in the field of the Church and history, cultivating it until it becomes mature. And then, God, and he alone, will reward the good and punish the wicked. […]
