THE WEEDS AND THE WHEAT. GOOD AND EVIL.
By our Pastor, Fr. Carmelo Jimenez
The readings for this Sunday call us to reflect on: human nature, the conversion of sinners, prayer as a help for conversion and finally, final judgment: the prize for the just Christian and the disgrace of the sinner. Many topics to consider.
In the human person we find good and evil, mixed in the same person. Ever since our first parents – Adam and Eve – sinned, concupiscence has been in our nature, that is to say the inclination toward evil. However, God saw that everything that he created was good, including man. Since creation was good, including human beings, God gave them power over his works. But the devil, the father of lies and all sin, tempted Eve, and through her Adam as well. And so man ended up inclined to evil. In every man and every woman, religious or not, believing in God or not, exists good and evil, and one has to be constantly deciding between good and evil. In man there are both wheat and weeds. It’s impossible to take out the weeds until the final judgment, so in the meantime we wait for the conversion of sinners.
In the gospel today we hear how the servants of the master said to him: “Do you want us to go and pull them up?” That is our nature, we want everything quickly, we don’t have patience. The master asked them to let the weeds grow with the wheat and that at harvest time they would be separated. And so in human beings God leaves the bad with the good, but he hopes that the bad will be overcome by the good, that the person will change. The first reading affirms: “For your might is the source of justice; your mastery over all things makes you lenient to all.” That is the divine hope, that our difficult, dark or bad side is converted into grace, light and goodness. This happens when a Christian is internally disposed to the divine, because God has “given his children ground for hope that he would permit repentance for their sins.”
Prayer is a help for our conversion but unfortunately we don’t always know how to ask, as St. Paul recognized: “the Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness; or we do not know how to pray as we ought.” But we take strength from prayer to be able to change and be better Christians each day. Our own prayer and the community’s prayer helps our conversion. Let us remember St. Augustine, who did not want to listen to his mother Monica, but by the prayers of his mother his moment of conversion came and he became a saint.
Finally, we will go through judgment. God is love, this is a great truth, but he is also just. Therefore may we not tempt divine mercy thinking that God always has the obligation to forgive and that at the last moment he will forgive us. The gospel affirms: “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.”
And so brothers and sisters, if good and evil exist in each one of us, may we always turn to prayer to ask for divine help and power to choose good and charity. May we ask for the grace of constant and gradual conversion, and never think that we are fully converted. May God give us his Spirit so that we may live as his true sons and daughters, living the virtues and avoiding the vices. May God, who created us good from the beginning, give us the grace to persevere in our faith, to grow in grace until we are fully converted to Him and we may one day be judged with love and mercy. May God give us the prize of eternal life.