Saturday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time
I don’t garden much or know a lot about plants, but the little that I do know helps me better understand Jesus’ farming imagery in his parables. Whenever I weeded, I’m always surprised and amazed as to how far weeds’ roots are or how spread out they really are or how hard it can be to take them out. Sometimes I don’t know which plant is a weed and which one was intentionally planted. In today’s Gospel, Jesus used metaphors of harvest and weeding in the Parable of the Weeds Among the Wheat.
What I find interesting is that Jesus doesn’t tell the workers to pull up the weeds. He tells them to leave them alone and let them grow alongside the wheat. Likewise, we live in a world with many injustices and evils that seem too difficult to overcome. While we cannot control what is around us, we can be a witness to the Gospel and identify what pulls us away from God.
Today’s first reading can help us learn more about being a witness to the Gospel. Jeremiah tells the people of Judah to reform from their bad ways, return to God, and be compassionate to their neighbors, foreigners, orphans, and widows. At this time, foreigners, orphans, and widows were the most vulnerable in society since they did not have a social network to support them. For our times, we are challenged to think about how we treat the most vulnerable in our society and are called to live the Gospel in which there is justice and belonging for all people.
May today’s readings help you delve deeper into living out the Gospel.
—Sr. Emily Sandoval, FMI