Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Reading 1 WIS 12:13, 16-19
There is no god besides you who have the care of all,
that you need show you have not unjustly condemned.
For your might is the source of justice;
your mastery over all things makes you lenient to all.
For you show your might when the perfection of your power is disbelieved;
and in those who know you, you rebuke temerity.
But though you are master of might, you judge with clemency,
and with much lenience you govern us;
for power, whenever you will, attends you.
And you taught your people, by these deeds,
that those who are just must be kind;
and you gave your children good ground for hope
that you would permit repentance for their sins.
Responsorial Psalm PS 86:5-6, 9-10, 15-16
R. (5a) Lord, you are good and forgiving.
You, O LORD, are good and forgiving,
abounding in kindness to all who call upon you.
Hearken, O LORD, to my prayer
and attend to the sound of my pleading.
R. Lord, you are good and forgiving.
All the nations you have made shall come
and worship you, O LORD,
and glorify your name.
For you are great, and you do wondrous deeds;
you alone are God.
R. Lord, you are good and forgiving.
You, O LORD, are a God merciful and gracious,
slow to anger, abounding in kindness and fidelity.
Turn toward me, and have pity on me;
give your strength to your servant.
R. Lord, you are good and forgiving.
Reading 2 ROM 8:26-27
Brothers and sisters:
The Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness;
for we do not know how to pray as we ought,
but the Spirit himself intercedes with inexpressible groanings.
And the one who searches hearts
knows what is the intention of the Spirit,
because he intercedes for the holy ones
according to God’s will.
Alleluia CF. MT 11:25
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Blessed are you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth;
you have revealed to little ones the mysteries of the kingdom.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel MT 13:24-43 OR 13:24-30
Jesus proposed another parable to the crowds, saying:
“The kingdom of heaven may be likened
to a man who sowed good seed in his field.
While everyone was asleep his enemy came
and sowed weeds all through the wheat, and then went off.
When the crop grew and bore fruit, the weeds appeared as well.
The slaves of the householder came to him and said,
‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field?
Where have the weeds come from?’
He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’
His slaves said to him,
‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’
He replied, ‘No, if you pull up the weeds
you might uproot the wheat along with them.
Let them grow together until harvest;
then at harvest time I will say to the harvesters,
“First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles for burning;
but gather the wheat into my barn.”’”
He proposed another parable to them.
“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed
that a person took and sowed in a field.
It is the smallest of all the seeds,
yet when full-grown it is the largest of plants.
It becomes a large bush,
and the ‘birds of the sky come and dwell in its branches.’”
He spoke to them another parable.
“The kingdom of heaven is like yeast
that a woman took and mixed with three measures of wheat flour
until the whole batch was leavened.”
All these things Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables.
He spoke to them only in parables,
to fulfill what had been said through the prophet:
I will open my mouth in parables,
I will announce what has lain hidden from the foundation
of the world.
Then, dismissing the crowds, he 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.”
or
Jesus proposed another parable to the crowds, saying:
“The kingdom of heaven may be likened to a man
who sowed good seed in his field.
While everyone was asleep his enemy came
and sowed weeds all through the wheat, and then went off.
When the crop grew and bore fruit, the weeds appeared as well.
The slaves of the householder came to him and said,
‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field?
Where have the weeds come from?’
He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’
His slaves said to him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’
He replied, ‘No, if you pull up the weeds
you might uproot the wheat along with them.
Let them grow together until harvest;
then at harvest time I will say to the harvesters,
“First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles for burning;
but gather the wheat into my barn.”’”
Homily for Nativity Mass on the Sixteenth Sunday Ordinary Time 7/19/2020
We just heard three parables about the Kingdom of Heaven. Parables can often be confusing, hard to understand because they aren’t always explained, which leaves them open to interpretation. However, parables are not meant to obscure or confuse, but to invite us to deeper meditation on the subject.
It’s kind of like why Jesus rarely answers a question with a direct answer, usually He asks another question. He wants us to think about it. Jesus did not come to earth to provide us with an instruction manual, rather, He came to invite us into a relationship with Him.
He wants us to live in relationship with Him, under the protecting umbrella of the Church, and the questions and the parables are meant to help us draw deeper into that relationship.
So here in these three parables about the Kingdom of Heaven, and similar to last week, we should think about heaven as Jesus himself.
Pope Benedict XVI said, “Jesus himself is what we call ‘heaven’; heaven is not a place but a person, the person of him in whom God and man are forever and inseparably one. And we go to heaven and enter into heaven to the extent that we go to Jesus Christ and enter into him.”
So when we hear things like, “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand,” it is true, because Jesus is present through the sacraments of His Church - Jesus is still present to us.
Let’s take a closer look at these three parables. Remember, these are meant to get us to think, to draw us deeper into our relationship with Christ, so what I bring out of it might not be what you bring out of it and that is perfectly okay.
With the parables of the weeds and the wheat we do get an explanation, it is a reminder of us that evil does exist right alongside good, and we need to be conscious of that.
But there’s more to it than that. Having grown up on a farm, sometimes farmers in our area would plant what is called “Winter Wheat.” But when you look out at the field, it looks like weeds. It isn’t planted in rows like corn or beans. Really, unless you know it is wheat, you may just think it is weeds.
To me, that goes to the uncertainty of our status, and our inability to judge one another. “Are we wheat or are we weeds?” is not ultimately for us to judge.
Eventually, we might begin to bear fruit, and then we can judge for sure for Jesus says You will know a tree by its fruit, but when we are young especially it is difficult to make that judgement on one another.
We let God be the judge of our salvation and the salvation of others in this regard, and it would be more dangerous to “pull the weeds,” in other words, allow the harvesters, the angels, to do the harvesting now because they might still be growing in their faith and might end up being wheat.
Jesus says, “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.”
So the weeds are “all who cause others to sin and all evildoers” - Jesus is not labeling us as either weeds or wheat, it is about what we do, whether we produce good fruit or bad fruit, and the hopeful thing about that is that we can change.
Our responsorial psalm said, “Lord you are good and forgiving.” And at the end of the first reading, it said, “And you taught your people, by these deeds, that those who are just must be kind; and you gave your children good ground for hope that you would permit repentance for their sins.”
We are made in the image and likeness of God, so we are essentially good, but sometimes we do bad things, sinful things.
So “the one who searches hearts” is searching for any bit of good in us that will bring us to repent and change our sinful ways, repenting while here on earth, giving us time to produce good fruit and show that we are wheat, worthy of being collected into the barn of heaven.
Next, we hear the parable of the mustard seed. Gregory the Great said, “Christ himself is the grain of mustard seed, who, planted in the garden of the sepulcher, grew into a great tree; he was a grain of seed when he died, and a tree when he rose again; a grain of seed in the humiliation of the flesh, a tree in the power of his majesty.”
The seed that Christ the Sower sows in us is his own life and identity. Then, our life becomes enlarged far beyond what we might have expected, enabling us to be a place where others may “come and dwell,” i.e. experience the love of God through us.
Last week we heard the parable of the sower and the seed and in that passage it said, “To anyone who has, more will be given and he will grow rich; from anyone who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”
This passage isn’t talking about currency like dollars and cents, it is talking about the currency of the kingdom of heaven which is love, love of Jesus and love of one another.
He was saying this to his disciples, His disciples were all in, they had decided “yes” when Jesus asked them to follow Him and what they had received, and would continue to receive, is Jesus himself.
A life of discipleship radiates Jesus to the world, so that “it is no longer I that lives, but Christ who lives through me,” and we become grafted onto the tree as a branch where more and more people will come and dwell in order to learn about the love of Christ.
Then we have the parable of the yeast. What we know about yeast is that a little bit can affect a large batch of flour. Similarly, a little bit of Jesus can greatly affect us, personally, but also society.
St. John Chrysostom said, “as leaven affects the whole portion of flour, so shall you change the whole world. Thus when you are cast down by your enemies, then shall you overcome them. Leaven is kneaded in without being destroyed, but gradually changes the whole.”
Our relationship with Jesus Christ can change the world, bringing his love and mercy and forgiveness into a world that hungers and thirsts for those things, but only if we endure in the face of suffering.
Because remember that Jesus didn’t come to rid the world of suffering, but transform it. No longer is our suffering useless, it now unites us, in spirit and truth, to the cross and resurrection of Jesus!
Jesus did not come to earth to provide us with an instruction manual, rather, He came to invite us into a relationship with Him. An invitation requires a response. Have you made a decision? How is your relationship with Jesus growing and developing? Are you allowing Jesus Christ to work through you in the world?
The Kingdom of Heaven is not primarily a place, it is a person, the person of Jesus Christ. I pray that we would all grow in our relationship with Him and that we would allow Him to transform our world through us.