Tuesday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time
In today’s reading from Matthew (13:36-43), we hear about the artful nature of growing weeds alongside our crops. This is one of only a few instances where Jesus actually takes the time and energy to break down one of his parables – a sign to us that we should listen closely (and Jesus reminds us to do this too at the end of his explanation). What should we be listening for? Well, there is quite a lot to take away from this reading, but I’ll tell you what I hear Jesus telling me when I read this passage: be careful when weeding in other people’s fields.
These are some crazy times we are living in. Not only is our nation in a complicated political position, but the U.S. and world are more divided now than ever. At least two major wars continue to drag on in Gaza and Ukraine, and elections are happening all over the world this year, many of which will result in unrest and violence. Amidst all this chaos is a culture of weeding. By this I mean that we live in a society that loves to critique, criticize, and cancel other people based on their words and actions, without any nuance or real dialogue. We are quick to paint the other person across the aisle as the enemy and tear apart celebrities the moment they make one bad decision. And at the center of it all is social media. Social media is our main tool of choice, our weedwacker if you will. It provides a space in our culture where we can anonymously weed out other people’s fields without having to think about their feelings or future.
The result of all this is a society of people saying, “Look at all the weeds that person has! Let me expose and pull up as many weeds as I can just to show you how many weeds their field has. It’s unbelievable.” The problem with this model is that there’s a fine line between calling someone out (or in) when they make a mistake and holding them accountable for their actions…and attacking them for making a human mistake. But the greatest sorrow, I think, of this model is that it is missing the part where the weeder turns a mirror on themselves and reflects on all the weeds in their own field, before they go weeding out someone’s else’s land.
We’ve lost the art of allowing one’s weeds to grow alongside one’s crops, which is to say that we have lost our trust in God that He will sort everything out. We are so busy weeding other people’s fields that we aren’t conscious of the weeds in our own field. What’s more, we are so busy trying to expose other people for their wrongdoing that we forget that it’s not our business to be a weeder. God calls us to be sowers, harvesters, even dinner guests, but not weeders. That job is above our pay grade and won’t come until the very end. Right now, we should just focus on minding our own fields and let God do the rest.
—Sr. Rose Rucoba, FMI