23 July 2022
Saturday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time
The parable in the Gospel today reveals a little about the mysterious way that God continues to direct the events of salvation history. In this passage, God is the good sower who created the universe and humanity with the fulness of original perfection. It was only afterwards that Satan, the enemy, came and sowed the seeds of evil and corruption. In the parable, the master of the field is faced with a decision and ultimately elects to allow the wheat and the weeds to grow up alongside one another until harvest time. What’s interesting is that this decision is explicitly made out of concern for the well-being of the wheat.
It’s not too great a stretch to imagine the world as a wheat field in which the good seed of virtue and holiness contends with the weeds of darkness and sin. After the Fall of Man when sin entered the world, God had the ability to choose literally any possible course of action. He could easily have decided to simply destroy everything and start over. He could have done anything. In His infinite wisdom and love, however, He elected to send His Onlybegotten Son to rescue us from the darkness of our own making. He continues to bless us with the total gift of ourselves, including our free will, and to invite us lovingly into His infinite mercy and forgiveness.
It is within this context that we live our lives today. The Providence of God is mysterious in many ways and yet rules and orders all things in the midst of and in spite of the darkness that persists in the world. Christ has already won the victory and so it is up to us to decide each and every day to be the good seed in the world such that our lives might continue to bear fruit both in this life and for all eternity.