Good News is precious these days. There is little enough of it in our papers and on our television screens! As we contemplate the evils of our world – the injustices, abuses of power, and injuries to the most vulnerable and to children – we can quickly lose hope. People ask how a God so good and so powerful can allow such things to happen. Inwardly, we too may often be baffled. How can the love and hope of the gospel exist in a world full of suffering and evil?
Jesus’ story of the wheat and the weeds have more encouraging answers. First, the man sowed good seed in his field: any evil is the work of his enemy. So, we cannot blame the bad things in our world on God. Then, given that there are bad things everywhere, it is striking that the owner of the field feels less perturbed by them than his servants. He is content to let wheat and weeds grow together until the harvest. The world is a mixed bag of good and evil, and the Church is composed of saints and sinners. Our own lives too are a mixture of good and evil. We need to be patient – with ourselves and with others – as we strive for the perfection God seeks, looking kindly upon shortcomings and failure. After all, judgement belongs to the Lord, and only at the harvest can the true nature of the plant be judged.
The glory of the church now is the holiness of ordinary, weak and sinful men and women. It is the shining of small stars in the darkness. The bright shining of the sun will follow the final separation which the Son will accomplish at the close of the age. So let us strive for purity in an impure world, not losing our hope because of the darkness against and within us, but trusting always in the Lord who sowed his good seed in us at baptism. He waits confidently for his seed to bear fruit – let us share his confidence and rejoice.
‘For there is no god, other than you, who cares for everyone, to whom you have to prove that your sentences have been just.’ (Wisd. 12:13)
