Jesus’ Sowing Children of the Kingdom as Good Seed, 17th Tuesday (II), July 28, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Tuesday of the 17th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of Blessed Stanley Rother, Martyr
July 28, 2020
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 would have heard on Saturday if we didn’t have the proper Gospel for the Feast of St. James, that while God the Father wants to sow Christians like wheat as children of the kingdom in 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, of being children. At the end of the Parable Jesus speaks about the righteous’ “shining like the sun in the kingdom of their Father” and earlier he mentioned 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 him, the world and the flesh. This is something we can see. In the middle of the field of the world there are so many faithful religious and ascetic priests, pious prayerful grandmothers and 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 ardently seeking to live as children of the Father, righteous and shining like the sun, and allowing him to plant us wherever he wishes, or whether, rather than good wheat that nourishes others, we’re growing more like weeds under the influence of evil, living according to the spirit of the world.
• 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. This is an important corrective for many faithful people today. Many Catholics think that the Lord wants us 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. They obsess about opposing malefactors more than doing good. They spend more time trying to out and oppose heretics, for example, than they do making converts.  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 clergy sexual abuse, when some focus more on ripping out the weeds than proclaiming the Gospel. 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. 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 sin — 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.
• Today we have the joy to celebrate for the third time the feast of one of the children of the kingdom sown by God the Father now radiantly shining for all eternity. Blessed Stanley Rother almost didn’t make the altars because weed whackers tried to cut down his vocation because he could never really master Latin, 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. We can focus on 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. We, too, are sown into a culture that is full of weeds, of folks who think the practice of the Catholic faith is evil not good, that the destruction of innocent human life is to be celebrated not opposed. But the same Lord who filled Blessed Stanley Rother wants to fill us with himself and make us shine like the sun.
• 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 this means is that when we convert to Christ, we don’t 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. At Mass we have not only the fruit of the Old Covenant but the fruit of the New and Eternal Covenant, by which Jesus, the Son of God, transforms us into being true children of the kingdom, true sons and daughters of the Father, capable of bringing light to the great destruction that overwhelms the virgin daughter of God’s people and to nourish those consumed by hunger and foraging in the land.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

Gospel MT 13:36-43

Jesus dismissed the crowds and went into the house.
His disciples approached him and said,
“Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field.”
He said in reply, “He who sows good seed is the Son of Man,
the field is the world, the good seed the children of the Kingdom.
The weeds are the children of the Evil One,
and the enemy who sows them is the Devil.
The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels.
Just as weeds are collected and burned up with fire,
so will it be at the end of the age.
The Son of Man will send his angels,
and they will collect out of his Kingdom
all who cause others to sin and all evildoers.
They will throw them into the fiery furnace,
where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.
Then the righteous will shine like the sun
in the Kingdom of their Father.
Whoever has ears ought to hear.”

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