Homily OT (A) 15th Sunday - Wheat and Weeds

The Parable of the Weeds

Wheat and Weeds in the World, in the Church, in my Parish, in my ECYD club, in my family, in my heart. Like a fractal: the form of the tree is per ceivable in the leaf.

Today is a day of great joy for us at Notre Dame because Patil, Serena, Lauren, want to know, love and serve Christ more deeply through their commitment in ECyD. You are all very young and yet your act of faith today is a sign of hope for us all. And we thank you for being generous with God! We thank you for reminding us that in the garden of the world there aren’t just weeds there is golden wheat. We are surrounded by it but we forget. We fixate on weeds.

We have a keen eye for seeing all that’s wrong with the garden of the world. We look at our neighbors and notice all the defects they have. And soon we begin to think that all is rotten. God is gone.

But the vision of faith paints a very different picture, much more real. It sees the imperfections in the garden, but it doesn’t cease to grow, to flourish, to strive on.

Imagine if you were to go to a random hillside around Jerusalem and decide to make a beautiful garden. Would Alessandra give you only one piece of instruction. “Go and uproot all the weeds.” Obviously not! If you spent hours as a team plucking weeds, at the end of the day, you might not a cleared area, but you wouldn’t have a garden.

Alessandra would tell you to plant palm trees, and hibiscus, and bourgenvillia, and gardenia flowers. She’d show you how to water the trees. Of course, from time to time, you’d have to pick a weed or two, but when the right things are thriving in the garden, it’s much harder for weeds to take root, much less to become thickets.

Today, you say to Christ. I want my heart to be your garden, Jesus. I want you to plant your own virtues in my heart so that I might be pleasing to you at the harvest time. Give me the daisy of humility, the lily of purity, the rose of charity! And all that is not worthy of you, Lord, I ask you to purge it from my heart.

But what is beautiful is that you do not toil alone in the garden. You have your spiritual family in the Church, and specifically, your ECyD team. Together you will plant and strive after the sun. Together you will grow, learning the Word of God together, making it come to life in your hearts, spreading your seeds in others, so the Kingdom of Christ can spread, like a beautiful garden over the face of the earth.

As we approach now the Liturgy of the Eucharist, it is appropriate to notice that the garden in the gospel wasn’t filled with roses or lilies, or many other exotic plants, but wheat. And wheat gives bread. And bread is life. We bring the best of our wheat to this altar and God transforms it into nth other than his own divine life. So to will he glorify us at the harvest of the last day. We have a foretaste of that moment at this liturgy.