16th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Reflection: Stir up your goodness
By SISTER MARY McGLONE
Putin invades Ukraine. Athletes drug themselves to gain the advantage over competitors. People lash out against immigrants, calling them invaders and criminals. Kids gang up on a child just to make them cry or run away.
Why do people do mean things?
Perhaps they’re selfish or need power or money to prop up their ego. Maybe they’re jealous of their victim or they’re seeking revenge. Sometimes bullying, racism and other -isms grow out of a poor self-concept: people needing to belittle someone different to make themselves feel adequate.
What bullies don’t realize is that they are exposing the fact that their own weakness needs propping up. In the end, they reveal their sense of powerlessness, not their strength.
How different from what the image the Book of Wisdom gives us of God: “You have the care of all,” “Your mastery of all things makes you lenient to all,” “In those who know you, you rebuke temerity.”
As today’s psalm says, God abounds in kindness. This tells us that God stays on the move — as in the beginning, now and forever. Not only that, but God often acts in ways that we least expect.
The parables Jesus tells today make an interesting combination. We hear about an enemy trying to ruin another by prodigiously growing things.
First, the weeds. The precise word Jesus used (zizanion) refers to darnel, a poisonous plant that looks very much like wheat when it begins to sprout. Jesus doesn’t tell us why an “enemy” planted this noxious weed through the farmer’s wheat field, only that it was done by an enemy.
Interestingly, the farmer won’t get rid of the weeds. “Let them grow together until the harvest.” The farmer’s decision makes sense because the roots of the two plants are intertwined, so to pull up one would damage the other. Darnel’s greatest threat to the wheat was that it competed for nutrients. When read as a parable, leaving the two together implied that the workers were not to judge what was wheat and what was weed. That judgment comes only at the harvest.
Jesus’ second parable offers an odd follow-up to the first. What we may not realize is that the mustard plant would often be classified as a weed. Mustard plants can grow as high as 10 feet, produce up to 8,000 seeds, and inhibit the growth of other crops. The idea that a farmer would plant mustard was laughable, but effective as a symbol of prodigious expansion.
The third parable we hear refers to leaven and about 10.5 pounds of flour. The leaven, as in sourdough, came from leavened dough left from a previous batch of bread. As with the other two, the parable refers to the transformative power of something seemingly insignificant.
Jesus described the kingdom of heaven as a collaborative process. People do their part to channel a power beyond their control. They help direct the unstoppable power of life and growth that belongs to God. This takes us to Paul’s words to the Romans.
Like the servants who might not distinguish wheat from weeds, Paul admits our inability to comprehend what God is doing among us. And like we heard from Wisdom, God has care of all: God truly cares about everyone and everything and wants to share divinity with it all. St. Augustine explained Paul’s belief in the Spirit praying within us, saying, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”
Ultimately, the Spirit works to disquiet us, to keep us restless like seeds and leaven that are impelled to grow, to burst into life. As in the parable of the wheat and the weeds, we don’t always know God’s will. What we can be sure of is that there is a deep longing in us, and in all of creation, to be part of the process that leads to experiencing the kingdom of heaven among us.
What is ours to do in this process? First, we need to get in touch with our deepest longings — our desire for life-giving relationships with God, others and all of creation. No matter what weeds may try to choke the life out of it, this urge for life remains deep in us and in every living creature.
Once we begin to be in touch with where the Spirit is moving in us, we are meant to stay restless like leaven and irrepressible seeds. We will gradually learn that it’s not ours to do the weeding, but rather to try to awaken or stir up the goodness in ourselves and others and contribute what we can to the bursting forth of the kingdom of heaven among us.
First Reading
(Wisdom 12:13, 16-19)
There is no god besides you who have the care of all,
that you need show you have not unjustly condemned.
For your might is the source of justice;
your mastery over all things makes you lenient to all.
For you show your might when the perfection of your power is disbelieved;
and in those who know you, you rebuke temerity.
But though you are master of might, you judge with clemency,
and with much lenience you govern us;
for power, whenever you will, attends you.
And you taught your people, by these deeds,
that those who are just must be kind;
and you gave your children good ground for hope
that you would permit repentance for their sins.
Responsorial Psalm
(Psalms 86:5-6, 9-10, 15-16)
R. Lord, you are good and forgiving.
You, O LORD, are good and forgiving,
abounding in kindness to all who call upon you.
Hearken, O LORD, to my prayer
and attend to the sound of my pleading.
R. Lord, you are good and forgiving.
All the nations you have made shall come
and worship you, O LORD,
and glorify your name.
For you are great, and you do wondrous deeds;
you alone are God.
R. Lord, you are good and forgiving.
You, O LORD, are a God merciful and gracious,
slow to anger, abounding in kindness and fidelity.
Turn toward me, and have pity on me;
give your strength to your servant.
R. Lord, you are good and forgiving.
Second Reading
(Romans 8:26-27)
Brothers and sisters:
The Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness;
for we do not know how to pray as we ought,
but the Spirit himself intercedes with inexpressible groanings.
And the one who searches hearts
knows what is the intention of the Spirit,
because he intercedes for the holy ones
according to God’s will.
Gospel
(Matthew 13:24-43)
Jesus proposed another parable to the crowds, saying:
“The kingdom of heaven may be likened
to a man who sowed good seed in his field.
While everyone was asleep his enemy came
and sowed weeds all through the wheat, and then went off.
When the crop grew and bore fruit, the weeds appeared as well.
The slaves of the householder came to him and said,
‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field?
Where have the weeds come from?’
He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’
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.”’”
He proposed another parable to them.
“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed
that a person took and sowed in a field.
It is the smallest of all the seeds,
yet when full-grown it is the largest of plants.
It becomes a large bush,
and the ‘birds of the sky come and dwell in its branches.’”
He spoke to them another parable.
“The kingdom of heaven is like yeast
that a woman took and mixed with three measures of wheat flour
until the whole batch was leavened.”
All these things Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables.
He spoke to them only in parables,
to fulfill what had been said through the prophet:
I will open my mouth in parables,
I will announce what has lain hidden from the foundation
of the world.
Then, dismissing the crowds, he went into the house.
His disciples approached him and said,
“Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field.”
He said in reply, “He who sows good seed is the Son of Man,
the field is the world, the good seed the children of the kingdom.
The weeds are the children of the evil one,
and the enemy who sows them is the devil.
The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels.
Just as weeds are collected and burned up with fire,
so will it be at the end of the age.
The Son of Man will send his angels,
and they will collect out of his kingdom
all who cause others to sin and all evildoers.
They will throw them into the fiery furnace,
where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.
Then the righteous will shine like the sun
in the kingdom of their Father.
Whoever has ears ought to hear.”