Gospel Reflection July 17 – Deacon Frank Iannarino
Sunday, July 19
Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Matthew 13: 24-43
Gospel:
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.”
Gospel Reflection:
In this weekend’s Gospel, Jesus tells the parable of the weeds among the wheat in response to the great question of how the faithful should respond to the presence of evil. Jesus rejects the easy solutions and instead proposes patience and forbearance: let the weeds and wheat grow side by side, until the harvest day, he says.
At first, this might seem surprising – good and evil being allowed to co-exist. But Jesus is not promoting evil nor is he giving it equal status with the good. In short, Jesus is reminding us that only God can truly judge the human heart; if we set ourselves up as judge or jury, we may risk destroying the good with the bad.
The kingdom Jesus proclaims must bear the imprint of God’s patient desire that all repent and turn to him.
The other two parables in this weekend’s Gospel serve as reminders that the kingdom is built on this patient love and forbearance and cannot be imposed by force, nor can it be hurried. It must grow slowly and freely, sometimes imperceptibly, like the mustard seed. It needs time and has a rhythm all its own as it transforms human hearts like yeast that turns dough into bread.
God gives us the necessary time to show by our lives that our hope is ultimately in him. Our lives are a time of grace in which to live, love, and hope in God who is patient and kind in all his judgments.
Deacon Frank Iannarino