Growing the Wheat in the Midst of Weeds, 16th Saturday (II), July 28, 2018

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Saturday of the 16th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of Blessed Stanley Rother, Martyr
July 28, 2018
Jer 7:1-11, Ps 84, Mt 13:24-30

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

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Yesterday we pondered Jesus’ Parable of the Sower and the Seed and looked at the hardened, rocky and thorny soil that can impact whether the seed he plants within us grows. Those obstacles, however, are basically internal, from our stubbornness, or superficiality or worldly cares and anxieties. There are also external factors that can impact the growth of the seed. Jesus describes them today. But one of the essential points he makes is that they can impact the growth of the seed only when we let them…
• Jesus today gives a Parable on how we’re supposed to live in time, in a situation which there are “wheat” and “weeds” growing up together, intertwined in the kingdom. In order to see the light the Parable sheds on our situation today, we first must understand the “facts” that Jesus was presupposing in his moral story. In the Holy Land still today, the wheat and the weeds(called lolium temulentum) to which Jesus was referring, still grow. They’re indistinguishable during the early phases of growth; not even expert farmers can tell the difference. When they grow enough to differentiate between them, their roots are so intertwined that you can’t take out the weeds without ripping out the wheat by the roots as well. So farmers need to let them grow, harvest them all and then separate them on sifting tables, lest the wheat be contaminated by the toxic fruit of the weeds.
• By this parable Jesus is saying, first, that the same patience and prudence that farmers exercise must be employed with regard to believers in his kingdom. The good seed and the bad seed, the children living according to the kingdom and those living according to other standards, grow up side by side, sometimes in the same field, the same home, the same parish, the same neighborhood. We really can’t tell the difference between them by sight, especially early in life. We can’t judge by present appearances. We need to wait until the end when Jesus himself and his angels will do the separation. This is an important corrective for many faithful people today. Like the zealous servants in the parable, many still think that the Lord wants us urgently to go into the fields out to pull up 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, the “good people.” But Jesus, without minimizing the evil being done, is not concerned primarily with the weeds; his priority is the growth of the wheat. He doesn’t want any of the good wheat lost by acting too soon, too summarily. We all know that there are some people who spend more time trying to out and oppose heretics than they do teaching catechism. They obsess about opposing sinners than they do about becoming saints. They want to purify the Church of those who aren’t fully faithful rather than focusing on inspiring others toward conversion by the example of their own joyful and merciful fidelity. Today there are an increasing number who spend more time criticizing the pope, or particular bishops, or priests than they do praying for them. It’s not that we can never constructively criticize others: the practice of fraternal correction (Mt 18), of courageously and charitably correcting others who are erring, is an important part of the faith. But some people make it their priority.  Jesus today shows us that he wants us, rather, to prioritize the growth of the wheat more than seeking to eliminate the weeds.
• Jesus is also saying that we shouldn’t be so flustered or discouraged when we find “bad seed” in the Church that we lose our focus on producing fruit. We will always, sadly, find those who, for example, are not living consistent with the Gospel — among the Catholics of our family and neighborhood, among those who teach, even among those who, as clergy and religious, are supposed to be living by the highest standards of all — but Jesus is telling us that there will be some bad seed and that while such weeds can provide frustration for the farmer or for the Christian, they ultimately can’t stop the growth of the good seed! With today’s parable and the one of the dragnet in which the net of the Church brings in both good and bad fish (which we will have next week), Jesus is helping us not to be scandalized by the presence of those who might even be living scandalously, and not lose our concentration by focusing on those who aren’t doing their job.
• He’s also giving us, third, an important lesson of conversion. 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. If the harvest had been done too quickly, there would have been a time when the future St. Paul would have been thrown into the fire before he had evangelized the ancient world, the future St. Mary Magdalene would have been lost before she became the apostle to the apostles, the future St. Augustine would have been singed before he became one of the greatest theologians and signs of hope, and so many of us would have been lost before absolution, because, as we confessed beating our chests at the beginning of Mass, all of us have greatly sinned by our own most grievous fault. If it were otherwise, we may have already been cut down ourselves. We might not have had the present time to bear fruit that will last, to become the wheat of God. And we must never forget that God can always work moral miracles: just as God himself took on human nature, just as that same God takes bread and wine and totally transforms them into his Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, so he can take weeds and make them wheat, he can take those who are living as children of the liar and the murderer from the beginning and change them into sons of God in the house of the Father.
• God seeks regularly to work those miracles of conversion from weeds to wheat. That’s what God through the Prophet Jeremiah was summoning his people to in today’s first reading. “Reform your ways and your deeds,” he said, “so that I may remain with you in this place.” They had been placing their trust in the fact that they were going up to the Temple to pray, but he said that their deeds were far from union with God. He wanted them not to put trust in deceitful words of praise, but rather in dealing justly with their neighbors, caring for resident aliens, orphans and widows, protecting the innocent rather than shedding blood, not worshipping false Gods and burning incense to Ba’al, not stealing, murdering, committing adultery and perjuring. For him to remain with them, he said, they need to remain with him in their actions. Even though they had been growing like noxious weeds, he was giving them a chance for conversion, to make them fruitful wheat. God mercifully gives us the same chance.
• Today the Church celebrates for the first time the feast day of a beatus who illustrated well how good seed can grow in the midst of weeds. Blessed Stanley Rother was beatified last September 23 in Oklahoma City and I was privileged to be there. He is the first native-born American priest martyr. You probably remember some elements of his story.
• I am very happy that I will be able to be present, to share the joy of the Church of Oklahoma, the Church of Guatemala, and the Church triumphant as the one known as Padre A’Plas in the Tz’utujil language of Santiago Atitlán — “Father Francisco,” after his middle name, because they couldn’t pronounce “Stanley” — officially becomes “blessed.” He could never quite learn Latin, which was essential for seminarians in the 1950s and early 60s. Much like St. John Vianney who was three times booted from the seminary because he couldn’t master the language, Rother was similarly dismissed from Assumption Seminary in San Antonio when it became clear that it wasn’t really going to improve. But a priest mentor and his bishop intervened, knowing his goodness, and arranged for him to finish at Mt. St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland. Little did his professors in San Antonio foresee that as a Missionary Father Rother would not only, through hard work and grace, master Spanish but also translate the Bible into the Mayan dialect Tz’utujil, learn how to share the faith with them in those languages and become, when necessary, a language instructor! He was a simple hard-working farmer, from a salt of the earth family in Oklahoma, who knew quite a bit about carpentry, tractors, seeds and soil, wheat and weeds. He was a good steward of the gifts God gave him and like a farmer cultivated those talents, putting them at the service of his people in Guatemala, repairing the plumbing, building and grounds of the Church and rectory, erecting a school, a small hospital, and a radio station, training the locals in better farming techniques, through digging a well, installing its pump, and irrigating the fields, driving bulldozers, stopping only for Mass, prayer and teaching catechists. But what I want to focus on is his courage in planting seeds and helping the wheat of faith to grow at a time when there were so many noxious weeds growing in the same soil. Around 1980, extremist elements in the Guatemalan army during Guatemala’s 36-year-long civil war started to use force and intimidation against some of the indigenous people and those who defended their rights. His catechists and parishioners began to disappear and were later found dead, their bodies tortured. They destroyed the radio station he founded to teach the locals math and languages and killed its director. In January 1981, once his name was put on a death list because of his opposition to the presence of the military in the region, he was pressured by friends, family and his bishop to leave for a time lest he become the next victim. He returned to Oklahoma, but his attention and heart were with the people whom he had served for 13 years who desperately needed a shepherd, surrounded by so many fierce wolves. As he repeated in various letters, a shepherd cannot run when his people need him. After three months, at the age of 46, he asked the permission of his bishop to return, and despite his family’s and others’ remonstrations, he did. Three months later, masked gunmen broke into his rectory at midnight, and, after he resisted their attempts to kidnap him, they shot him twice in the head. He was one of ten priests murdered in Guatemala that year. But we know that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church, a seed that grows even in the midst of weeds. He imitated Christ in becoming a grain of wheat falling to the ground and dying to bear much fruit. We ask God through his intercession for that same holy focus and courage.
• To strengthen us to live up to what Jesus calls us to today, Jesus comes to us on the altar, so that he can indeed transform us from the inside out. This is the way, like with Blessed Stanley, that we become fruitful wheat, by truly entering into Christ. This was the wisdom of one of the greatest saints of all time, St. Ignatius of Antioch, who died as a martyr in Rome in 107. As he was being brought to Rome to be killed in witness of the faith, he wrote to the first Roman Catholics, “I am God’s wheat and shall be ground by the teeth of wild animals. … Let me be food for the wild beasts, for they are my way to God. I am God’s wheat and shall be ground by their teeth so that I may become Christ’s pure bread. Pray to Christ for me that the animals will be the means of making me a sacrificial victim for God.” Here at Mass today, we don’t need the teeth of wild animals to prepare us to become pure bread with Christ; we have the fire of the Holy Spirit and the prayers of Blessed Stanley, the Blessed Mother, St. Ignatius of Antioch and all the saints.

The readings for today’s Mass were