Memorial of Saint Joachim and Saint Anne, parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary
The gospel reading for today is a parable about the weeds in the field of wheat. I have always struggled with this scripture passage. I have wondered it is that God doesn’t just make it so that we do not sin. Why doesn’t God remove evil from occurring in the world before it happens or even prevent bad things from happening in the first place?
According to the parable, the kingdom of God is like a farmer who plants wheat. When weeds grow in the wheat field the farmer has to make a decision. Does the farmer weed the garden week by week or wait until the wheat grows first and then separate the weeds from the wheat at the time of harvest? You might think that the best thing to do would be to pull out the weeds as they start to grow. However, this might not be the best option. There are a number of things that could happen as a result that are less than desirable. First, you might not be able to tell at first if the plants growing were weeds or wheat. Second, because the roots of the plants may be intertwined or grown together you might not be able to pull out the weeds without pulling out the wheat also. So there are good reasons to leave the weeds among the wheat until the harvest, but only if doing so doesn’t make it impossible for the wheat to grow.
This analogy can only be taken so far, but it is worth thinking about, since it is supposed to tell us something about how God deals with human beings. God gives each of us a life to live. During the course of our lives we have the opportunity to make decisions for ourselves about how we are going to live. We are not robots who are programmed or hard-wired to do God’s will. Nor are we predetermined to fail. (As a human being and a distinct person of the Trinity Jesus himself has a human will that is his own and is not simply to be identified with his divine will. In fact to deny this is singled out in Christian history as the heresy of Monotheletism.) So it seems that God permit s people to do bad things in part because it gives human beings a measure of freedom to live their lives. God has created us with the ability to do good, but it is also possible for us to do evil. God also gives us multiple chances to use this freedom to repent and to try to do better than we did in the past.
The first reading for today recounts how Moses meets face to face with God and receives the Ten Commandments. What is key here is to see that even though the Israelites are described by Moses as a “stiff-necked people,” God is described as being slow to anger and abundant in “kindness and fidelity.” Jesus’ words in the parable of the weeds in the field present a warning about the consequences of sin. Yet when the parable is read in conjunction with the picture of God’s mercy that is presented both by Jesus himself in his earthly ministry and in God’s interaction with Moses and the Israelites, we can be reassured of the help that God wants to offer us so that we will be able to live our lives in a way that is pleasing to God.
Joel Schickel