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Homily:
16th Sunday of Ordinary Time – Cycle A
I remember back when I was a kid that during the summer,
and after I was old enough to be trusted to cross Theodore Street, which was a
busy street close to the house in which I grew up, my mother would send me over
to my grandmother’s house to help her with little projects around her
house. Grandma Lucy always had
vegetables growing in her gardens and so one of my regular jobs at her house
was to weed the gardens. I was always
glad to help out my grandma, but this was one of the more unpleasant jobs for
me as a 13 year old. As many of you know,
I’m sure, it is a very tedious job and for a teenage boy it can be very
difficult to maintain the concentration necessary to do that job well.
One of the difficulties that I encountered in the job was
making sure that I only pulled out the weeds and not the sprouts of grandma’s
vegetable plants. I often learned the
distinction the hard way: when grandma would come out to check on me and find
one of her tomato plants uprooted. Now,
I love my grandma Lucy, but she was pretty rough around the edges, so when I
screwed up like that, I heard about it from her. She never gave up on me, though, because she
always let me back into her garden to go after those weeds.
Sometimes, in the years that followed, when I would hear
today’s Gospel reading, I would think back to those summer hours spent weeding
grandma Lucy’s garden and I would think to myself: “Man, I wish grandma would
have paid more attention at Mass; because it sure would have saved me a lot of
headaches and heartaches if she would have just let those weeds grow!” My guess, however, is that she did pay
attention and that she knew that Jesus’ parable means slightly different things
depending on which level you apply it.
Taken as it is, Jesus’ parable about the wheat and the
weeds applies to a pretty grand scale: the kingdom of heaven. Applied at that level, the parable speaks
very generically and the people he speaks of are “caricatures”, that is,
identified by a major characteristic: in this case, whether they are good or
wicked. Now, parables are, essentially,
metaphors; and a metaphor does two things: it both highlights certain things
and hides others. For example: to say
that “time is money” highlights that time is something valuable and that it can
be spent. What it hides, however, is
that time cannot be saved: it just keeps ticking on no matter what we do. Thus, in the parable of the wheat and the
weeds, Jesus highlights that on the earth there will always be wickedness mixed
in with the good; but that’s ok, because at the final harvest the good will be
separated out from the wicked. What it
hides, however, is that people can change, while wheat can never be anything
more than wheat and weeds never anything more than weeds. Thus, the wicked (that is, the weeds) are not
doomed to always be wicked, nor are the good (that is, the wheat) predestined
to remain good; for they, too, can fall into wickedness. And so the scale that Jesus is working in is
important for our interpretation.
Speaking at the level of the kingdom of heaven, the
interpretation means exactly what we’ve said: that always there will be the
wicked mixed in with the good and that the good will be preserved from the fire
at the final harvest. Brought down to
the individual, however, the interpretation will have to change a bit. At this level, Jesus would certainly speak of
rooting out the weeds as soon as they appear, because, as we heard last week,
the good seed that falls among thorns is quickly choked and produces no
fruit. In other words, there is no room
for both wheat and weeds in the individual heart of a person.
We can also apply an interpretation of this parable to the
level of small groups, such as a family.
There we’ll find a mixture of the grand, kingdom-of-heaven scale
interpretation with the small, individual scale interpretation. Here we see that wickedness can, indeed, be
sown among the good seeds of the members of a family. Yet, as on the individual level, it is
important to root out wickedness at the first sign of its growth, for
wickedness sown in the midst of the family can destroy the entire family
altogether.
One of the most destructive weeds that can be sown in the
midst of a family is selfishness. In a
family—more so even than on the level of a neighborhood or a town—the
individual members are dependent on one another. When selfishness takes root in a family it
begins to separate members one from another as each seeks to satisfy his or her
own wants and desires often at the expense of the others, thus stripping the
family of the good fruit it could produce.
Dare I say that one of the most sinister seeds of selfishness in a
family is the use of artificial means of contraception? Sinister, because it appears to be something
benign, that is, completely harmless, while it quietly destroys the rich
harvest a family might produce.
Contraception is the seed of selfishness in a family
because it cuts God out of the parents’ relationship. In effect, it says “God, you can’t be trusted
to direct this part of our lives, so we are going to decide for ourselves when
we’ll have children.” For many, what it
also says is “We want to have sex without consequences, that is, without
responsibility”, which is nothing more than saying “Sex is about satisfying my
desires; it has nothing to do with my family (that is, unless I want it
to).” That sounds pretty selfish,
doesn’t it? When that kind of
selfishness grows up in a family, it’s like poison that ruins the whole
harvest.
“But Father, we can’t afford to have an unlimited amount of
children.” Yes, I know. And God knows that, too. That’s why he designed our bodies—particularly
the female body—with a discernible fertility cycle that can be cooperated with to
space out pregnancies: in other words, a natural way to prevent a pregnancy
when it’s not feasible to support another child that nonetheless acknowledges
God’s control over life instead of selfishly taking control for one’s self. The various methods for discerning and
utilizing this cycle are called “Natural Family Planning” (or NFP, for short) and
they are like a natural herbicide that destroys selfishness at its roots and
fertilizes the individual members of the family so that together they produce a
rich harvest.
NFP forces couples to be attentive to one another so as to
“listen” to the female body’s natural signals indicating when it is fertile for
conceiving a child. Thus, in order to
space pregnancies, couples have to periodically abstain from sex during these
fertile periods, causing them to restrain their passions (and, thus, their
selfishness) and to find other ways to express their intimate love for each
other, which teaches them greater self-giving and often causes them to grow more intimate with one another. Now, is there anybody here that doesn’t want more intimacy—that is, deep,
meaningful connections with others, especially their spouses—in their lives?
This week the Church is sponsoring “NFP Awareness Week” and
so I invite all couples, young and not-so-young, married and engaged to be
married, and anyone who thinks they might be married in the future, to explore
the benefits of NFP for their family.
(You can start by reading the “extra page” of our bulletin this week. Additional resources can be found on the US
Bishop’s website: www.usccb.org.) Talk
to your friends about it. Find someone
who is using NFP and ask them what it has done for them personally and for
their family. Pray about it and ask God
for the courage to trust him and his plan for you and your family. Most of all, try it. Test its claims for benefits and let it test
you. Perhaps you’ll find some weeds
within you that you didn’t realize were there.
NFP may help you to root them out.
My brothers and sisters, spilling seed lifelessly is like
sowing weeds of selfishness among the wheat of your family. With NFP, however, one lays down a strong
defense against those weeds; for he or she acknowledges that God is in control;
and that that is a good thing! With NFP
trust in God and trust in his power to overcome evil, even as it grows up
around us, grows and we flourish. Thus,
at the final harvest, we will be gathered together among the wheat and welcomed
into the barn that is eternal happiness—that is, the satisfaction of all of our
desires—in heaven. Strengthened by this
Eucharist, let us take courage to choose this life of happiness today.
Given at All Saints Parish:
Logansport, IN – July 20th, 2014
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