My Dear Parishioners,

      This weekend Holy Mother Church provides us with Jesus and his teaching parables. And once again, we are talking about good seed and a bunch of weeds. The wheat and the weeds grow up together. That is a pretty succinct description of human history. It’s true even in Jesus’ own biography. He chose 12 apostles to be his most intimate associates, and wasn’t one of them a sometimes negative presence? It might be unfair to single out one betrayer, however, when others would also desert, deny, grow skeptical, jostle for power and make inquiries that prove there really is such a thing as a dumb question. The same gospel teaching is available to all disciples, but how few actually receive and embrace it?

Salvation history is acres and acres of weeds competing with the wheat for space, resources, and attention. Every Abel faces his Cain, and every David faces his own reflection in the mirror. Good and evil are rarely distinct characters in the story. Growing up in such close proximity, the wheat and the weeds frequently seem to be offshoots of the same stalk.  So, our task is not to separate out the bad elements in our society from the good ones but to acknowledge that all are tainted. Every one of us is capable of monstrous choices—which also means we’re equally capable of heroic ones. In the same way, the weedy parts of our past can still produce wonderful fruit. If we’ve suffered, it may make us more compassionate, gentle, sympathetic. If we’ve sinned, we can more easily forgive, offer guidance, encourage repentance in others.

Over the years I have often heard of people who wanted to always do what is right and just. Historically, many  with these good intentions would try and separate themselves from the world and all its sin. Escaping in this way is not realistic or often feasible. We turn to the words of the household owner in the gospel when asked by his workers about pulling up the weeds and heed his answer: “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.”

    My friends, you and I are called by the Lord to live our lives confidently in the midst of all that surrounds us. When we acknowledge Jesus in our life and walk with him, the weeds don’t need to be a problem or a cause for our worry. God bless you all and Oremus pro invicem.

Fr. Scott Shaffer