July 23rd, 2023 - Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

The parable of the wheat and the weeds sets the classic battle between the good guys and the bad guys, the heroes and the villains, the forces of light and the forces of darkness. The wheat represents everything good, positive, wholesome. The weeds represent everything bad, negative, destructive. According to Jesus, you can’t just pull out the weeds because their roots are intertwined with the roots of the wheat, and you don’t want to risk destroying the entire crop of wheat by ripping up the weeds during the growing season. Jesus adds: “don’t worry; God will collect the wheat and the weeds and sort them out at harvest time.” By teaching us to let the wheat and the weeds grow together until harvest time, Jesus is saying we are all actually a mix of wheat and weeds… but God the Father is so good and forgiving, so kind and merciful that he gives us the time and the grace we need to change our ways, follow Christ more closely, and eventually produce a rich harvest of charity.  So we have to try to love the best way we can so that at harvest time, we’ll have a healthy and abundant crop of wheat to present to the Lord.