I’d like to share a little of the commentary on these parables (Matthew 13:24-30) and then there’s 2 practical themes I want to talk about.
In the first parable of the wheat and the weeds, the commentators say the weed that Jesus has in mind is the darnel. The Jews referred to it as bastard wheat because in its early stages, it looks just like wheat. You can’t distinguish the one from the other. It’s not until they begin to produce seeds that you can tell them apart, but by that time, they have become so intertwined that you can’t pull up the darnel without also pulling up the wheat. So, you let them grow, and then at harvest time, people have to carefully separate them because the darnel is somewhat poisonous.
At the end of the gospel, Jesus explains the parable which talks about the ultimate separation of the good from the evil, but can also be read as consoling. One early church commentator, St. Isidore of Pelusium says the sinners are not immediately pulled up and burned to give them time to repent. Just this past Friday I learned a great little saying from Fr. Pat – every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future. I love that.
The next parable about the mustard seed growing into a large tree is clearly showing us that the kingdom is going to start out very small and grow to become very large. But Brant Pitre made another observation that I thought was really interesting. He pointed out, as other commentators do, that the OT also uses the tree as an image for great kingdoms. For example, in Ez 17, God foretold that Israel would be like a majestic cedar that shelters the birds of the air. There’s a couple other places where a kingdom is described as a huge tree. Brant Pitre pointed out that Jesus describes His kingdom as a mustard tree. Well, a mustard tree is actually a very large bush that might reach 10 feet high, and if you look at it, it looks like a tangled mess. This is the image Jesus for His kingdom and when he said this I thought, no wonder the Church is such a mess; He said it would be.
In the last parable a woman mixing yeast into flour is another parable on growth.
Now, there’s 2 practical themes that came to me while reflecting on these parables.
The first is that trials, difficulties, challenges, like living with weeds or living with weeds in our own heart that we need to struggle with, are good for us. We hate them, we avoid them like the plague, and when we can’t, we try to distract ourselves with pleasant things. But, in reality, they’re good for us. It’s only through trials that we grow. There’s no other way.
One of the clearest examples of this for me is weekly Mass attendance. I saw a survey several months ago on the percentage of Catholics who attend Sunday Mass by country. In our country, where attending Mass is safe, the percentage of Catholics who attend Mass every Sunday was 24% pre-pandemic; it’s now 17% with an additional 5% who now watch Mass on TV. The country with the highest Mass attendance – Nigeria, where attending Mass is not safe. Since 2009, Boko Haram has killed over 50,000 Christians, and set on fire 18,000 churches and 2,200 Christian schools.[i] The percentage of Catholics who attend Mass every Sunday in Nigeria – 94%[ii]. I’m sure there are other factors as to why Nigeria has such a phenomenal attendance, but I’m convinced that a big part of the difference is that we humans are just better when we face trials.
The second theme is that God is active, God is at work in the world, even if we don’t always see it, like a tree growing, or dough rising. I want to illustrate this by talking about something we can see – recent miracles.
Since the year 2000, we already have 4 approved Eucharistic miracles and at least 2 more recent miracles not yet approved. Of the 4 approved miracles, 3 involved bleeding and 2 of them also had heart muscle fibers in the host. In the 4th miracle the image of a man’s face appeared on a host.
Of the 2 not yet approved, the most recent just took place up in Connecticut on March 5 when a eucharistic minister was distributing communion and was getting low on hosts and suddenly there were more hosts in the ciborium. Right after communion, the priest announced to the congregation what happened and the Mass was being recorded so you can see him make the announcement[iii], and he said, “It’s really, really cool when God does these things, and it’s really, really cool when we realize what he’s done, and it just happened today”.
Another one happened one year ago yesterday near Guadalajara Mexico where a host that was exposed in a monstrance started beating like a heart. Immediately some people pulled out their cell phones and started recording it so you can go online and see it as well[iv].
These last 2 have not been approved yet, but I still think it’s amazing how much the Lord is giving us in this time, and how often the eucharistic miracles involve the heart, either bleeding or actual heart tissue.
The last miracle I want to mention is Sister Wilhelmina. Her story is fantastic. She is an African American Sister who entered the Oblate Sisters of Providence at the age of 17 in 1941. She had a great sense of humor. She liked to say “I am Sister Wilhelmina – I’ve a hell of a will and I mean it”. She was always a more traditional sister and so in 1995, at the age of 71, she was invited to found a new religious community of nuns associated with the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter which is a traditional Latin Mass community in full communion with the Catholic Church. It was slow going, but by the time she died in 2019, there were 42 Sisters in the Order. Three months ago, the Sisters dug her up to move her bones to a shrine on their property. When they opened her grave, they found her to be incorrupt. This means that her body was fully intact, she was not showing signs of decomposition. She was buried in a simple wooden box with no embalming, so they were expecting to find bones. Instead, she was incorrupt. This has happened in the Church before where some saints have been incorrupt. Sister Wilhelmina is the first American to be incorrupt and this was just discovered 3 months ago.
So my point is this – God is active. He is working. Everything is under His providence. Everything that happens is His will, either active or permissive, and everything is designed for our good if we live for Him. We can learn from Bishop Strickland. If you’re not familiar with Bishop Strickland, Kevin Wells just wrote a great article about him at Crisis Magazine[v]. He’s an ordinary guy. He says that; I’m just an ordinary guy from East Texas. I was in Seminary with him for 2 years down in Dallas. My recollection is that he liked being active and working with his hands either in the shop or on the grounds. He’s an ordinary guy who loves Jesus and is determined to say yes to Jesus always no matter what. We need to follow his lead. We need to do just like he’s doing. God bless you all.
[i] https://www.vaticannews.va/en/church/news/2023-04/over-50000-christians-killed-in-nigeria-by-islamist-extremists.html
[ii] http://nineteensixty-four.blogspot.com/2023/01/where-is-mass-attendance-highest-and.html.
[iii] https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/253944/priest-reports-possible-eucharistic-miracle-at-connecticut-church
[iv] https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/251891/a-new-eucharistic-miracle-in-mexico
[v] https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/bishop-strickland-laying-his-life-down-for-his-sheep
Pain of Grace 