Peace be with you. Friends, we're reading
during these weeks of summer from the 13th chapter
of Matthew's Gospel, which is just
a masterpiece. It contains many of the
great parables of Jesus, and these were just a
typical form of teaching. Jesus rarely taught in
sort of doctrinal form. He taught through these
evocative stories. The parables often turn
things upside down. They reverse
our expectations. They make us think in
fresh and challenging ways. We have many today,
but I want to focus just on one because
it's so rich, I think, both theologically
and spiritually. It's the famous parable of
the wheat and the tares, to give it its
classical name. We might just say the
wheat and the weeds. See, remember, here's
how the story begins. The kingdom of heaven
may be likened to a man who sowed good seed
in his field. While everybody 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. So the sower of
the seed here, well, there's the Lord. And what's he sowing? Well, the good wheat
of the kingdom. Think of all the manifestations
of Christ's activity in the world. Think of the
church at its best. Think of saints. Think of everyday holiness. That's the wheat that's
come from these good seeds that have been sown. But while everybody
was asleep, and that's important
to notice, very often, the infiltration
of evil comes in hidden and
clandestine ways. We saw it clearly coming. Oh, look, there's evil.
We act, but very often it
happens behind our backs. It insinuates itself in sort of sneaky,
hidden ways while everybody
was asleep. Notice too please here,
sleep. I've often told you
this in the Bible is a negative symbol,
a negative trope. It means lack of
spiritual awareness. Think of the three
disciples sleeping in the garden of Gethsemane
while Jesus is struggling. While they were asleep, think of David having
his long siesta on the roof of his palace
before the Bathsheba incident. Sleep means lack of
spiritual attention. While they were asleep,
not attending, wickedness found its
way into the church, into the world of the saints,
et cetera. So when the crop
grew and bore fruit, the weeds appeared as well. Here's lesson number
one I think from this. We should expect corruption
and evil within even the best manifestations
of the kingdom of God. Let me say that again. We should expect corruption
and evil even within the very
best manifestations of the kingdom of God. Remember, years ago when
I was a student at Mundelein Seminary,
we had this marvelous professor, he's gone to God now,
called Charlie Meyer, Father Monsignor Meyer,
and he taught church history. And Charlie, we called him,
took a certain delight, I would say, in telling
some of the stories of the corrupt popes and bishops
and hierarchs of the past. And it happened every year
that students who would come to the seminary full of
idealism and a certain naivete would be scandalized
by these stories. And Charlie would sort of
give a little wicked smile. Well, see, there was
something really salutary about those history lessons because he was showing
the truth of this. Yes, the church up and down
the ages in all of its glory, yes, in the saints and yes,
in the great and holy popes and leaders,
yes, indeed. But from the beginning,
there's always been corruption, sin, degradation within
the life of the church. We should expect it. How come? Because an enemy's
been at work. That's what the parable says. So in terms of the parable,
it's some enemy of the sower of the seed. Maybe it's just a rival
farmer or something. But we know what it means
in this spiritual order. Without falling into
some form of Manichaeism, it's not like God against
some coequal dark power. That's Star Wars. That's not the Bible. Nevertheless, the Bible
does indeed speak of these dark and destructive
spiritual powers that stand to thwart
the purposes of God. And indeed, anyone who's
kind of mature in the spiritual life knows this, the more the glory of the
kingdom is manifested, the more the dark
power goes after it. The clearer the
operation of grace, the more aggressive the
operation of the dark power. An enemy has done this,
has purposely sown these weeds among the wheat so
that as the wheat grows up, there it is, yes, beautiful
and healthy in itself, but look at now
surrounded by the weeds. That's what's wonderful
about this image. It's not as
though you've got, well, there's
the wheat and oh, there's the weeds are
over there next to it. No, no. They grow up together. The weeds winding
themselves around the wheat. Now, that's what's really
devilish about this, and the parable is very
good at showing it. Watch please as he
goes on with the story. His slaves said to him, "Do you want us to go
out and pull them up?" He replied, "No, no. If you
pull up the weeds, you might uproot the
wheat along with them." There's a very deep
metaphysical and spiritual truth here everybody. First, the
metaphysics of evil. Augustine saw this. Thomas Aquinas saw it. All the great masters. Evil is not something
substantive in itself. Evil is as Aquinas put it,
privation boni. It's a privation
of the good. It's a corruption
of what's good. It's a lack in something that
is otherwise good in itself. I'll give you a silly example
of a cavity in your tooth. What's evil about the cavity? Well, it's this corruption
of something good. The tooth is good and has an
important natural purpose, and now it's got
a cavity in it. It's got a corruption in it. What this means
is evil is always, listen now,
parasitic upon the good. Again, it's not like,
well, here's good and there's evil. No, evil by its very
nature is in the good. It's a corruption
of the good. It's parasitic,
therefore upon the good. Or think of a cancer
that's compromising an organ. Well, the organ is good,
it's doing its healthy, natural thing, but now the cancer
is corrupting it. What's the implication? It is practically impossible
ever simply to get at evil without threatening
in some way the good. Do you see why? So you're a skilled
dentist and you notice, well, there's a
cavity in a tooth. Well, let me just go in
there and get it out. Well, it doesn't
work that way. You don't just go get it
out or let's put the tooth to one side and I'm going
to fight that cavity. No, the cavity's
in the tooth. And therefore, if you want
to solve the problem of the cavity while still retaining
the integrity of the tooth, you have to be very,
very delicate and careful. Talk to any surgeon,
any oncologist dealing with a cancer,
the same thing. You're dealing with a tumor
that is parasitic upon some healthy organ. Just go in there and
get that cancer out. Well, you better be
pretty careful about it. All right, move outside the
realm of physiology. How about a corrupt parish,
a corrupt church, a corrupt community? Is the corruption evil? Yeah, of course it is. All right, I know. Just go in there
and get it out. Well, just like the tooth,
whatever there is that's corrupt in let's say a
parish is parasitic upon what's good and healthy
in the parish. It has to be. It's just the way it works. You say, but that community,
boy, that thing is rife with sin and
with corruption. Yeah, but to get that out
without destroying the community itself, you've got to
be very careful. It's a lesson that
I think young priests often have to learn because
they'll get into a parish, it's a typical
rookie mistake, and they see right away, oh yeah, this is a mess and
this thing is not working. Yeah, okay. Right. But the wise
pastor might say, but you can't go in there
with two hands and just rip it out. You've got to be extremely
delicate and careful to extricate the evil
without destroying the good. See, and that's why the
master says in the parable, "No, no, if you
pull up the weeds, you might uproot the
wheat along with them." Remember everybody,
that principle. Think of the weeds wrapping
themselves around the wheat. Tear those weeds out, yeah, and the wheat
comes up with them. So what's the conclusion? Listen now to the parable. The master says, "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." What's being signaled here
everybody is that yes, we are on for dealing with
evil when we see it and with requisite delicacy
and all that. Yes, indeed. But also at the
end of the day, some evils can be
dealt with only by God. It's only God who has the
delicacy and the wisdom to separate the wheat
from the weeds. Maybe sometimes in the
presence of terrible evil, we have to be patient and
allow God to do his work. And now, one more point here. Might it be the
case that sometimes, I know it's a high mystery,
I know, and it's a frustrating mystery too, that sometimes
God permits evil, as Augustine said, to bring about
some greater good. Might it be that God
has permitted some corruption and some evil precisely for
his ultimately good purposes? As many point out,
the sex abuse scandals we've been going through in
the church for the past now, what, 25 years, did they affect a real
cleansing in the church? Absolutely it seems to me. Am I making excuses? No, no, no, no, no. But seeing sometimes how
God might permit certain forms of evil to bring about
a greater good. Let me give you one
last one from Aquinas, and I know it's puzzling, and I know it's a
little troubling, but it's right
on this point, and it's quite interesting. Thomas says, "Sometimes God
permits even sin so as to allow certain
virtues to appear." His example, without the
cruelty of the tyrant, there's no patience
of the martyr. Think of all the martyrs
who were killed by terrible tyrants. Well, I know it
sounds weird to say, but without the
tyrant's wickedness, you wouldn't have
seen that virtue. I'll give you a real
particular example. Maximilian Colbert, think of
the great saint of Auschwitz. In all of his spiritual
power and glory, simple fact that without
Hitler's oppression, there would be no
Maximilian Colbert. Does God sometimes permit,
I know it's awful to say, and we don't always see it, I'm giving you
that one example, but we typically
don't see it clearly, but does God sometimes permit
the weeds to wrap themselves around the wheat
for his own purposes? Now, none of this
is designed to give, oh, here's the
clear cut answer. Here's the problem of evil, and here's how I
deal with it, 1, 2, 3. No, it's a story that sheds
light everybody on different aspects of this very
thorny problem. So take a look
at it this week. Maybe take out your Bibles,
go to Matthew chapter 13 and find this parable, and think about your
own struggles with wickedness and with sin in light of what
the Lord's telling us here. And God bless you.
