The Parable of the Weeds

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“He put another parable before them, ‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. While everybody was asleep his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and made off. When the new wheat sprouted and ripened, then the weeds appeared as well. The laborers went to him and said, Sir, was it not good seed that you sowed in your field? If so, where did the weeds come from? He said to them, Some enemy has done this’” (Matt. 13:24-28).

Our Lord speaks to us now, as on many other occasions, about the kingdom of heaven, and how the kingdom's growth is hidden. “The kingdom of God is within you,” we're told (Luke 17:21).

In each person, the kingdom of God emerges from the seed sown by God's works and by His Word, like the working of yeast in bread. It's unexpected in the way that the tall mustard seed grows from the smallest of seeds.

Why does God permit evil to grow alongside the good? Why does He permit some to reject the Word of His Kingdom?

Because, as we're told in the Psalms, “God is slow to anger and abounding in kindness, and He is just” (Ps. 103:8).

Our Lord assures us that the evildoers and those who cause others to sin “will be thrown into the fiery furnace at the end of the age” (Matt. 13:42).

But by His patience, God is teaching us that above all, He desires repentance and the gathering of all nations to worship Him and to glorify His name.

“God's patience opens our hearts to hope” (cf. Pope Francis, Angelus, July 19, 2020).

“Even though we don't know how to pray as we ought, the Spirit will intercede for us,” St. Paul says (Rom. 8:26).

But first, we must turn and call upon Him. We have to commit ourselves by letting the good seed of His Word bear fruit in our lives. Each one of us has to try and be good soil where that good seed can take root.

We’re told that in the field where the good seed was sown, weeds also sprout up (Matt. 13:25).

In other places, Our Lord tells us that “out of the human heart” come all sorts of ugly things: envy, jealousy, lust, pride, gluttony (cf. Matt. 15:19; Mark 7:21).

These are the evil things: the weeds, our laziness, our disorder, our love of comfort, our lack of spirit of sacrifice or service, our lack of fortitude or fighting spirit.

These are the weeds which, with our examination of conscience, we have to try and identify and get to know those areas of our self-love.

All the great spiritual writers speak about how self-love is the ruination of a soul—and we're all full of self-love.

This is one big strong weed with a big root there, deep inside each one of us. We have to try to identify those roots and dig them up from their very foundations.

That's why we need Confession, why we need spiritual direction, why we need continual formation.

With the passage of time, the Holy Spirit may help us to see more clearly, in all their glorious technicolor, aspects of those weeds that possibly we never saw before, and we didn't know they existed.

We begin to think all sorts of terrible things. We are able to identify aspects of our selfishness or our disorder or our laziness that we weren't aware of before.

Those things were always there; just God with His graces has not let us see them up to now, or doesn't let us see them all at once because we might die.

But when He lets us see them, it's because He wants us to do something about them.

“No one who tries to cultivate a beautiful, healthy garden reserves a plot for weeds” (cf. Dag Hammarskjöld).

We know that all those ugly things that Our Lord speaks about are things that we have to root out completely so that our hearts, our soul, our mind, our imagination can be in tune with our God and what He wants for us.

“The servants go to the master and say…, ‘Where did the weeds come from?’” Our Lord responds, ‘An enemy has done this’ (Matt. 13:27-28). An enemy, someone who is in competition” (Pope Francis, Ibid.).

The servants want to go right away and get rid of those weeds. “The laborers said, ‘Do you want us to go and weed it out?’ But he said, ‘No, because when you weed out the weeds, you might pull up the wheat with it. Let them both grow until harvest; and at harvest time I shall say to the reapers: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burnt and gather the wheat into my barn” (Matt. 13:29-30).

The master doesn't want to take the risk of spoiling the wheat. It's necessary to wait for harvest time. That's when the weeds will be separated and burnt.

We shouldn't be deceived or lose heart when we see weeds among the wheat.

Truth and holiness mixed with error, injustice, and sin, and that's why we need never be scandalized by our wounded human nature, by all the evil things that may boil and rise within us.

St. Josemaría liked to say we are all capable of the most terrible things, and therefore we realize that all men are capable of the most terrible things (cf. Josemaría Escrivá, Friends of God, Point 123).

If from time to time we hear or see some of those terrible things or read about them in history, our humble response should be, “There but for the grace of God go I!” (attributed to St. Francis of Assisi).

I'm just as bad as all of those things, all of those people. I have the same wounded nature and bad tendencies. Therefore, I have to fight to be better. I have to struggle to be holy.

We could ask Our Lord for that grace: deeper desires of personal holiness.

We're told in Scripture, “He makes his sun rise on the good and on the bad” (Matt. 5:45).

We're told in St. Matthew, “But I say this to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven. For he causes his sun to rise on the bad as well as the good, and sends down rain to fall on the upright and on the wicked alike” (Matt 5:44-45).

We needn’t be too worried about the evil, the injustice, the sin that we may see around us in the world. It's always been like that. Our era is no worse than other eras. We shouldn't worry and complain.

Human nature is the same, but God wants us to try and put order in it, and to realize that we won't find perfect justice in this world.

If God ever allows us to experience some injustice, that's what Christ experienced, and we could look forward to that perfect justice which we know is coming.

The harvest draws near. God wants us to work, that we might be numbered among the children of God who “will shine like the sun in the kingdom of the Father” (Matt. 13:43).

One additional insight we could have into this parable is that only Our Lord can distinguish weeds from wheat. Sometimes what looks like weed might be wheat. It might be a plant that's not yet fully developed.

Some people are late bloomers. Often, we have to give people time, time to change, time to grow—people in our family, in our marriage, in our office, in our neighborhood.

Anyone who takes care of a garden and has seen plants that are not quite as developed as the others knows that with the right growing conditions, maybe with the right fertilizer, that plant may one day bloom and produce fruit too.

Sometimes there are little plants because they've been in the wrong soil, or they didn't get enough light, or too much water has inhibited the growth of the plants.

Or sometimes little plants will spring up underneath a bigger plant, and that bigger plant maybe blocks out most of the sunshine that those little plants need to grow and mature properly.

Or the big plants might drain the nutrients out of the soil that's around them, and this too can affect the growth of the little plants.

The servants want to eliminate the evil immediately: ‘evil people should be terminated.’

“But the master is wiser, he sees farther. They must learn to wait because enduring persecution and hostility is part of the Christian vocation.”

Very often God permits tough conditions to mold our soul, to breed a new fortitude there, a new love, authentic love; an authentic love that can only blossom on the cross.

“Evil has to be rejected, but those who do evil are people with whom it is necessary to be patient.” We don't resort to violence.

Peter in the Garden of Gethsemane resorted to violence. He drew his sword and wanted to get rid of this servant of the high priest. But Our Lord put his ear back on. That wasn't His way of doing things (Luke 22:50-51).

Our Lord invites us to practice “justice tempered by mercy. If Jesus came to seek sinners more than the righteous, to cure the sick first before the healthy (cf. Matt. 9:12-13), so must the actions of the disciples be focused not on suppressing the wicked, but on saving them.”

He came “not to call the upright, but sinners.” Patience lies there.

In St. Matthew, we're told, “It's not the healthy who need the doctor, but the sick. Go and learn the meaning of the words, ‘Mercy is what pleases me, not sacrifice’” (Matt. 9:12-13; Hos. 6:6).

The master's vision: with his vision he sees far. The servants just see the problem. What the servants want or care about is a field without weeds; the master cares about the good wheat.

“Our Lord invites us to adopt His vision, one that is focused on good wheat, that knows how to protect it even in the midst of weeds.”

We give our friends, our acquaintances, or possibly our enemies, if we have any—we give them time, we give them possibilities, we pray for them, mortify ourselves for them.

Maybe they're not meant to react at this particular moment. Maybe they need time and a bit more formation and a bit more grace to see the evil of their ways.

People who are always hunting for limitations and defects of others don't collaborate well with God.

Rather, we have to try and see the good that silently grows in the field of the Church, in the field of history, cultivating it until it becomes mature.

If we look at the great history of the Church down through the centuries, all the great things the Church and the people of the Church have accomplished, we see how the kingdom of God has been growing in people, in places, in parishes, in dioceses, in countries, cultivated all the time by the personal holiness of the people who are bringing these things about.

Lord, help us to see a kingdom that's growing silently in people. Help us to see the good that there is in each individual person.

St. Josemaría liked to say, “I have never knocked on the door of a heart without finding some good there.”

Then, at the end of time, it will be God and He alone who will reward the good and punish the wicked. It's not our position to judge.

Clarity about the sin, but compassion on the sinner. Christ always had compassion on the sinner.

We don't advocate violence, or even anger. We try to work towards greater patience, a more supernatural outlook.

Then Our Lord talks about the harvest. “Let them both grow till the harvest; and at harvest time I shall say to the reapers: ‘First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burnt, and then gather the wheat into my barn’” (Matt. 13:30).

The harvest is a very beautiful word and concept in our Christian vocation. We're interested in the harvest. We think about the harvest. We dream about the harvest.

That's what it's all about: souls. “Souls, Lord, souls! They are for you, they're for your glory” (cf. J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 804).

The Church exists for souls. We have to be concerned with souls—eat, drink, and sleep souls, morning, noon, and night—forgetting all about ourselves, because Our Lord has told us that “the harvest is great, but the laborers are few” (Matt. 9:37).

God has called each one of us to be one of those laborers.

Our Lord talks about the harvest and the remedy that would take place at the end of the age.

Sometimes it's only when time passes that we see the fruits of the things that the Church has done in previous eras. Or sometimes only in our own lives, with our apostolic efforts, we see the fruits of those efforts many months or years later. Maybe decades.

That's why sowing seeds in the lives of your children—a word here, a word there, a gesture, a little bit of example; when they see you controlling your temper, when they see you going out of your way to help a sick person or a poor person, or bringing old clothes or old things that you don't use in the house anymore, or presents that children got some time last Christmas and you try to facilitate them to some poor family—these are lessons that last forever.

“They will teach these things to their own children” (cf. Deut. 6:7).

We’re told, “At the harvest the angels will separate the weeds from the wheat” (cf. Matt. 13:30).

We could think of the Blessed Eucharist. We consume the Lord's Body at every Mass, and then we're scattered throughout the world.

When He “gathers the wheat into His barn”—maybe that's what Our Lord means. He will gather His own to Himself.

We could also think that not everyone will be gathered into the safety of His Kingdom. That's why we can never tire of planting the seeds of faith in our family, with our friends, with our classmates, our co-workers, our neighbors, or the community that we live in.

Or even the random strangers that we may encounter in our lives along the pathway of our Christian vocation. God brings us in contact with this person and that person.

Sometimes we might have a kind word to say to somebody. Other times we might give them a prayer card, invite them to a retreat or to a recollection, share a book with them, or share some time, and open the drawbridge of our hearts to grow in personal friendship with this person.

Nothing is ever lost. We're in the business of sowing seeds so that the wheat may grow.

Also, it's for us to help other people to see the weeds that may be there in their own lives.

We work for a lot of things in life that are temporary and don't last. But a person's soul is eternal.

St. Josemaría used to say we have to be able to, or willing to, go to the ends of the earth to save a soul. “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but loses his own soul?” (Mark 8:36).

God weighed the material weight of the world against the weight of one soul, and the one soul won. One soul was more important than the material well-being of the whole of society.

We should try and keep our eyes, our focus, on eternity. That's the horizon we have to be looking at.

One eye on eternity, while at the same time, one eye on the steps that we have to make one by one as we travel through this life.

We plant the seeds. But we're also told in Scripture that “God gives us the growth” (1 Cor. 3:6).

We know that the seeds will always yield fruit. But God will make them grow when and as He wants.

Much of our growth may come from the mistakes we make in this life—particularly if we're sorry for them, and we learn something from them.

And all those people that we love—they go through the same process. Christ is the hope for everybody. He wants all of us to make it safely to the Father's kingdom.

We're also told in this parable, “An enemy has done this” (Matt. 13:28). That enemy has a name: the devil.

“Alongside God—the master of the field—who only and always sows good seed, there's an adversary, who sows weeds to impede the growth of the wheat” (Pope Francis, Angelus, July 19, 2020).

Lord, help me to see the devil who may be sowing seeds of bitterness or resentment or envy or jealousy or impurity in movies, on the television—a lack of charity—so that I can be attentive to these things.

Fight the devil on a daily or an hourly basis. It’s a very good idea to pray the Prayer to St. Michael every day and teach your children to do the same; to pray the Prayer to the Guardian Angel.

“The master acts in the open, in broad daylight, and his goal is a good harvest. But the adversary takes advantage of the…night, and works out of envy and hostility to ruin everything” (Ibid.). We need not be surprised by the things the devil does.

We could ask Our Lord that we might be able to recognize the devil. Smell him out in places and people, so that we can flee far away from the wickedness and snares of the devil.

He's God's great opponent. His intention is to mess up souls, “to stonewall the Kingdom of God through wicked workers, sowers of scandal.”

One of the great messages we have to try and transmit to young people today is the truth, beauty, and meaning of human love. Sex is not love.

We have to lift the world onto a whole new planet, and do everything we can to achieve that.

“The good seed and the weeds don't just represent good and evil in an abstract sense. Rather, they represent human beings, who can follow God or who can follow the devil. … Destruction always happens by sowing evil. It is always the devil who does this through our own temptations.”

Lead us not into temptation, to gossip, to destroy others. Keep us on a higher plane.

In The Way, we're told, “In the moments of struggle and opposition, when perhaps ‘the good’ fills your way with obstacles, lift up your apostolic heart: listen to Jesus as he speaks of the grain of mustard seed and of the leaven. And say to him: ‘Explain the parable to me.’

“And you will feel the joy of contemplating the victory to come: the birds of the air lodging in the branches of your apostolate, now only in its beginnings. and the whole of the meal leavened” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 695).

St. John Paul II, Blessed Álvaro, St. Josemaría talked about a new flourishing of the Church in the world. We're still looking forward to that.

We're also told in The Way, “Have you not heard the Master himself tell the parable of the vine and of the branches? Here you can find consolation. He demands much of you, for you are the branch that bears fruit. And He must prune you ‘to make you bear more fruit.’

“Of course that cutting, that pruning hurts. But, afterwards, what richness in your fruits, what maturity in your actions” (Ibid., Point 701).

“To sow. The sower went out. … Scatter your seed, apostolic soul. The wind of grace will bear it away if the furrow where it falls is not worthy. … Sow and be certain that the seed will take root and bear fruit” (Ibid., Point 794).

“The world… ‘That is our field!’” we're told in the Furrow, “you said, after directing your eyes and thoughts to heaven, with all the assurance of the farmer who works through his own ripe corn. We want Christ to reign over this earth of his” (J. Escrivá, Furrow, Point 292).

Holy Spirit, may you help me to see more clearly the weeds that may be there in my soul, so that I can have the fortitude and determination to root them out and to be ready to do anything.

Anything, rather than commit sin. Anything, rather than deny my Lord, ready to do everything to achieve that kingdom for which I was created.

Our Lady is always with us. Mary, may you help us to understand and imitate God's patience, who wants none of His children to be lost, whom He loves with the love of the Father. And so, help us to go out to each soul and win it for you.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

UI