Becoming Good Seed as Children of the Kingdom, 17th Tuesday (II), July 31, 2018

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Tuesday of the 17th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Ignatius of Loyola
July 31, 2018
Jer 14:17-22, Ps 79, Mt 13:36-43

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• There’s been a progression among the eight Parables Jesus has been preaching to us as recorded in the 13th Chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel. They’ve gone from focusing on the power of the seed of the Word of God to bear 30, 60, 0r 100 fold fruit in those with good soil, to showing how the growth of the Kingdom happens, as a mustard seed or leaven, once someone really begins to bear that fruit. Today Jesus says that once we receive Him as the Seed sown in us, once we become united with him, he seeks in turn to sow us together with him in the field of the world, as “children of the kingdom.” At the same time, however, he describes in today’s explanation of the Parable of the Weeds and Wheat, which we heard on  Saturday, that while God the Father sows us like wheat as children of the kingdom of the world (united with Christ), so the “Enemy” sows like weeds the “children of the Evil One.” How are we supposed to relate to this reality as wheat and weeds, of children of the kingdom versus those of the evil one?
• The first thing we should ponder is what it means to be in a relationship of filiation, because at the end of the Parable Jesus gives us the key, about the righteous’ “shining like the sun in the kingdom of their Father” and earlier that the weeds are “children of the evil one.”  At first glance, it might seem that this parable points to an almost Calvinist notion of predestination, that we’re born either of God or of the devil. But in the spiritual case, what we’re talking about is a relationship of adoption. Through baptism, we become adopted children of God (Rom 8:15; Gal 4:5; Eph 1:5). There’s a choice on God’s part to extend to us this supreme gift and there’s an acceptance of it on our part and a desire to live as chips off the old divine block. Similarly with the devil, there’s an offer on his part — seldom explicit, but through temptation — and an acceptance on the part of free men and women to live according to the world and the flesh. This is something we can see. In the middle of the field of the world there are Missionaries of Charity, pious prayerful grandmothers and many innocent children on the one hand and Porn makers, abortion doctors, and drug cartel leaders on the other. Today is an opportunity for us to examine the principle on the basis of which we’re living, whether we’re seeking to live as children of the Father, righteous and shining like the sun, or whether, rather than good wheat that nourishes others, we’re growing more like weeds under the influence of evil.
• The main point of the parable is about what to do with the weeds. The slaves ask their Master, “Do you want us to go and pull them up?” And he shouts, “No!,” lest “you pull up the weeds [and] uproot the wheat along with them.” Out of concern for the wheat, for the children of the kingdom, he urges patience until the harvest. In order to understand better Jesus’ message, it helps to know something about wheat and weeds (called lolium temulentum) in the Holy Land. The wheat and the weeds Jesus was likely pointing to are indistinguishable during the early phases of growth. Not even expert farmers can tell the difference between them. When they grow enough to distinguish between them, their roots are so intertwined that you can’t separate them without ripping out the wheat by the roots as well. So one needs to let them grow, take them all out and then separate them on sifting tables, lest the good wheat be contaminated by the toxic fruit of the weeds. By this parable Jesus is saying that the same patience and prudence have to be exercised with the proclamation of the kingdom. The good seed and the bad seed, the children living according to the kingdom and those living outside the kingdom, grow up side by side. We really can’t tell the difference between them, especially early in life. We can’t judge by present appearances. We need to wait until the end when Jesus himself will judge. But there’s a bigger point:  Jesus is telling them not to worry so much about the weeds, but about growing as seeds of the kingdom, as children of God, bearing fruit.
• As we discussed on Saturday, this is an important corrective for many faithful people today. Many think that the Lord wants them to go out and pull up all all the weeds, to find all of the children of the evil one, expose and in some fashion eradicate them, lest they poison the wheat, the children of the kingdom. But Jesus is teaching us another way today. Without minimizing the evil being done, Jesus wants us to prioritize the growth of the wheat more than seeking to eliminate the weeds. There are some people who spend more time trying to out and oppose heretics, for example, than they do making converts. They obsess about opposing malefactors than doing good. They want to purify the Church of those who aren’t fully faithful rather than focusing on inspiring others by the example of their own merciful fidelity. This is all the more poignant after the scandal of Cardinal McCarrick has come to the surface and we recognize that many knew and didn’t rip out the weeds and so now many want to make up for lost time. Jesus is saying today that the judgment will come, but we’ve got to grasp that we need to wait for the judgment: if we try to separate the wheat from the weeds now, we’ll end up losing some of the wheat, especially those who really are or will become wheat who right now would appear to be weeds. There’s both wheat and weeds in the field of the Church. We shouldn’t be shocked that we find in the Church people who are sinners, even occasionally people who are corrupt, unrepentant sinners. There are people within the Church, not to mention within society, who are living the type of life in which they’re being prepared to be weeds fit for burning at the end. But Jesus preached this parable not fundamentally as an image of predestination, but of conversion. Jesus has come into the world with the power even to transform those who might seem like weeds into fruitful wheat. Conversion is possible. He has come to turn the eyes streaming with tears that Jeremiah describes in today’s first reading as a result of sub — with people slain, others famished, priests and prophets deported, and the people crying out, “We recognize, O LORD, our wickedness, he guilt of our fathers, that we have sinned against you” — into redeemed joy. If the harvest were done too quickly, then we would never have had St. Ignatius of Loyola, whom the Church celebrates today.
• Until he was 30, St. Ignatius sought worldly honor for placate his vanity on the battlefield. But then, in a battle, he had his left leg shattered by a cannonball, and that was the best thing that could have happened to him. While he was convalescing, after exhausting all the romances and knights’ tales he had in his castle, he read a book on the lives of the saints and was pierced by his own shallowness in compared to their substance. He was moved by the saints’ valor and heroism. He grasped that they were fighting the good fight in the battle that counted most. And he asked one of the most important questions in the history of hagiography: “Why can’t I do what Francis of Assisi did? Why can’t I do what Dominic of Guzman did?” He knew that they were men just like him, but men who said yes to God, men who gave the Master Potter permission to form them for what he needed most. And Ignatius made the commitment to serve the true King. His transformation was arduous. He spent nine months in a cave in Manresa praying, turning his wish into a firm will, allowing God to do the difficult work of melting his worldly ways into clay that could be reformed. The interior struggles he went through as he pondered his sinfulness and Christ’s beauty eventually became his famous Spiritual Exercises, the most popular and influential retreat manual in history. He then knew he would need an education to be of much use, so, in his 30s, he returned to grammar school with young children in order to learn Latin before going for advanced degrees in universities. It was at the famous University of Paris that he met the other first Jesuits, including his roommates, the future St. Francis Xavier and St. Peter Favre, and he helped them to become among the most radiant sons of God shining in the Father’s Kingdom. Jeremiah had cried out to God “For your name’s sake spurn us not” and in the Psalm we responded, “For the glory of your name, O Lord, deliver us.” Ignatius was a tangible sign of conversion and he sought thereafter by God’s mercy not only to give glory to his name but “greater glory,” the most he could.
• One of the climaxes of the Spiritual Exercises which he developed in the cave of Manresa, taught to his spiritual sons, and now guides so many on retreats, is St. Ignatius’ meditation on the two standards or banners. He has us imagine we’re on a big battlefield and on one side there is the standard of Christ and on the other the standard of Satan. We have to choose one or the other. Christ is offering us a live of poverty, humility, self-denial, the Cross. Satan is offering us all the vanity and pleasures of the world. As fish, we need to swim toward one or the other. We have to choose. We have to be wheat or weeds. We have to be children of the Father or children of the evil one. The Spiritual Exercises not only help us to choose Christ but to persevere in that choice.
• At the end of today’s Gospel, Jesus mentions that the scribe instructed in the Kingdom is like the head of his household who takes from his storeroom both old and new. What it means is that when we convert to Christ, it’s not like we lose whatever was authentic in our lives before, but find the fulfillment of all of those things. For the scribes, the scholars of the Old Testament, once they learned about the Kingdom, about Jesus’ fulfilling their messianic hopes, they are able to take from their storeroom of prayer and study both “new and old” to live by and help others to live by. In the life of St. Ignatius, he was able to take from his storeroom all of his previous virtues of hard work, daring, courage, perseverance and put them to service with the new things that he had learned through prayer and study. The Lord wants to transform us in the same way. He doesn’t throw out our own experiences, but reforms them and continually seeks to perfect in us with our permission. Today God wants to inspire us to be as docile in St. Ignatius in allowing him continually to form us and plant us as seeds in the world. He wants us to make the commitment to persevere under his standard in the good fight. He wants us to ask: Why can’t I do what St. Francis, or St. Dominic, or St. Ignatius has done? He wants us to recognize that we can do in our own situation what they did in theirs, provided that like them, we will it. The same Lord who strengthened them has just taught us and is now about to feed us to fortify us with his very presence, his own holiness, on the inside.

The readings for today’s Mass were: