Wheat and Weeds

            Our Lord spoke of the Kingdom of Heaven in parables and yet deigned as well to explain the meaning of the parables to His disciples.  His Apostles, especially, needed to discern the “hidden” meaning of Christ’s analogies, the spiritual lesson, so that they, as the foundation of the Church in this world, would comprehend the ways of God’s providence in establishing His rule in the hearts and minds of men and women who would follow Him – those who would be wheat. 

            But there are also the weeds, the “children of the evil one,” our Lord explained.  In the field of this world, good seed is sown by God, and yet the evil one too sows in this field, the fruit of which are weeds.  The two – wheat and weeds, children of the Kingdom of Heaven and children of the evil one – grow up together, interspersed throughout the world, sometimes hardly distinguishable, but nevertheless different in their very essence. 

            The Church, Lumen Gentium (of the Second Vatican Council) tells us, is the “Kingdom of Christ already present in mystery” and “grows visibly through the power of God in the world” (LG 3).  Christ sows good seed in the field of the world through the agency of His Church – good seed planted by the means of the Sacraments and the preaching of God’s Word.  This seed, following Christ’s parable of last Sunday’s Gospel, falls almost indiscriminately, and yet generously, on all kinds of soil, the soil of human hearts only one of which is considered “rich”:  the soil that bears the fruit of the seed planted in it.  That is, the wheat.

            But the Church, like the field of the world – since She is “in the world but not of it” – the Church too suffers the presence of weeds, growing up amongst the wheat.  This is troubling to many a Christian who really wants to be wheat, troubling too to the Church herself as this infestation causes the world to mock, and so reject the Church’s claim to speak for Christ.  How many times have I heard Christians dismissed as “hypocrites”!  How often I have heard the Catholic Church reviled because of the weeds in her (especially immoral priests and negligent bishops) who have wounded and scandalized so many!  If we are shocked into despair at this, then it’s our own fault, since our Lord clearly warned us that this is the way things would be. 

            My response to those who would dismiss the Church because of the sins of her members is simply this:  to remind people that it is one of the chief signs of human weakness and sinfulness to use the sins of others in order to let oneself off the hook.  That is, how easy it is to stop trying to be holy because Fr. So-and-so failed so miserably, Bishop So-and-so neglected his duties, or prominent members of the laity seem to live two lives – one of wheat and the other of a weed.  What else is new?  This kind of tragic deception harks all the way back to the original band of Apostles, with the likes of a Judas Iscariot.  Secondly, I remind people – including myself – of what wheat really does look like, spiritually speaking.  Please, I say to such self-assured judges of the Church – please take some time out of your self-indulgent schedule and contemplate the Saints.  There you will discover what the Church, as the agent of Christ for the furtherance of His Kingdom, is capable of:  saints whose lives breathe the very air of holiness and devotedness to God, and whose glory is not in the least diminished by the proliferation of weeds in the visible reality of the Church Militant, the Church in pilgrimage in this world.

            But then there still are the weeds, yes, many of them, and all the more dangerous for their ability to not only choke off the life of the surrounding wheat, but also for their ability to reproduce.  After all, weeds too bear forth seeds; weeds in the Church – and there are many – are not content to enjoy their own traveling experiences down the broad and gently sloping pathway toward eternal damnation, but seek to recruit other members to their dissenting, complaining, whining, group of those who-know-better-than-the-Church.  Such withering weeds, so at odds with every Saint ever canonized, shelter themselves in the shade of the Church to carry out their pathetic and diabolical efforts to insure that others join them in their perdition.

            Here then is God’s testing ground:  the field of the world, where God offers His life-giving word as generously as a farmer sows his plot of ground in hope of a future harvest.  The weeds too are sown by the Evil One, and they too proliferate, disguising themselves as much as they can, as wheat… until the Day of Judgment, when all secret thoughts and motives will be openly revealed, and when wheat and weed will be judged in accordance with the fruit that they have born, the former granted entrance into everlasting happiness and the latter thrown “into the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”

            Interestingly, our Lord zeros in on that which identifies the weed in its evil – all those “who cause others to sin.”  That is, all those – whether exteriorly in the Church or not – who, having rejected the seed of the word of God, have become agents of discord, falsehood and immorality; and like the most tenacious weed, seek to spread their folly and filth as far and wide as possible.  Joining themselves in heart and soul to the projects of the Evil One – so visibly evident in the cultural arena of America (abortion, the sanctioning of homosexuality and the denigration of marriage, indifference to the truth claims of the Catholic Church, etc.) – they grow and multiply, not bearing any fruit that will feed God’s people as wheat would do, but bearing the fruit of the furtherance of their own project of eternal self-destruction, whose only consolation, if there is any, will be that others have joined them in their madness.  These are the weeds, spread throughout the field of the world and in the Church.  They are to be most pitied, even as one protects himself from their dank and damning influence:  wheat pretenders, often ludicrously self-righteous, focused only on their own agenda rather than that of the Church, they are poison, children of the evil one.  “Whoever has ears ought to hear,” our Lord finally warns us all, even as He offers us, everyone, the Word of life that is obedience to God, the true sign of being wheat, a member of God’s Kingdom.