“Let them grow together until the harvest.”
We have a profound experience of God’s love in the sacrament of confession. We leave the confessional and walk right into an occasion of temptation and we may even fall into the very same sins that we had just confessed in the sacrament and resolved never to commit again.
We resolve that we are not going to allow the toxic character of someone close to us to spoil our moods or kill our good attitude. We are faithful for some time and then, in a moment of poor vigilance, we give in and allow the unsavory character of another person(s) to influence us negatively.
We are not strangers to scenarios like this. We have them all the time. We may be thinking, “When am I going to get final victory over these sins and weaknesses in my life?” Or we ask, “When am I going to avoid or triumph over the negative influences of evil in the world?” We come so close to becoming discouraged because of this unrelenting struggle.
We can easily relate with the servants in the parable of the weeds and the wheat who cry out to their master when they see the toxic weeds mixed in with the good wheat, “Do you want us to go and uproot the weeds?” We can just sense their desire to get this struggle over with as soon as possible.
But Jesus’ two responses teach us something about our spiritual struggles. He first says, “No, if you pull up the weeds you might uproot the wheat along with them.” Jesus’ desire that this wheat grow is so intense that He would not risk anything that might endanger them. He would not even risk a premature separation of the wheat from the weeds if this will risk the growth of the wheat.
Then He adds, “Let them grow together until the harvest.” Jesus wills that the wheat struggle with the weeds for nourishment and space till the time of the harvest. Jesus’ words show a certain trust that He has that the life in this seed will eventually triumph over all adversities.
In short, Jesus desires that the wheat grow and that they grow, not through complete separation from the toxic weed, not through isolation from all adversities, but through the unceasing struggle with the weeds that the enemy has planted.
Applying this to our own lives, Jesus wills that His life in us too should grow through our struggle with sin within us and evil in the world. Sacred scripture confirms His confidence that His life in us will surely ultimately prevail over all darkness, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”(Jn 1:5)
But we must also embrace the struggle involved to the very end because, as the saying goes, “Dead bodies do not struggle; they just float down the river.” We who are alive with the very life of God in us must also struggle that that divine life grow within us and spread out to others.
But Jesus does not just plant His life in us in holy baptism and then let us struggle with sin and evil in the world. On the contrary, He is giving us all that we need to struggle faithfully against sin and all evil till the end of time.
First, He is offering us His gift of the Spirit so that we too pray and live just like He did in fidelity to the Father’s will, “The Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought…The Spirit intercedes for the holy ones according to God’s will.” Our spiritual struggle begins with our unceasing struggle to pray well and to grow in our prayer. The Catechism speaks of prayer as a battle because it is “both a gift of grace and a determined response on our part. It always presupposes effort.”(CCC 2725) It is in prayer that we cultivate that spiritual discernment we need to be vigilant and discern rightly the good seed from God that must be accepted and the poisonous weed from the devil to be rejected.
Secondly, Jesus is offering us the gift of His mercy because He knows that, despite our good resolutions, we will often fail in fidelity, “Your mastery over all things makes you lenient to all…But though you are master of might, you judge with clemency.”(Wisdom 12:16,18) The same powerful God who governs all things and permits evils in our lives and in the world also “permits repentance for our sins.” The sacrament of Reconciliation is the greatest expression and avenue for this divine power to bend over and alleviate human misery today.
Thirdly, Jesus is offering us the gift of time. Just as both the weed and the wheat are given time to grow through struggle, Jesus allows us time too to repent of our sins and failings, mature in the goodness that He has planted in us, and communicate this goodness to others in our world today. Time is also a gift of divine mercy that we cannot take for granted.
Fourthly, He is offering us the gift of His own Mother Mary to help us in this struggle. By virtue of the Immaculate Conception, Mama Mary had no internal struggle with sin whatsoever. But as a lily among thorns, she experienced that tension of being the only sinless human person in a fallen world. When Jesus gave her to us at the cross to be our mother too in Jn 19:27, He gave us a spiritual fortress in whom we can find sure refuge from the assaults of the enemy and all the graces and examples that we need for our spiritual struggles.
Ultimately, Jesus Christ gives Himself to us in the Eucharist to strengthen that divine life within us. The Christian life cannot be reduced to struggling against sin within and evils without; it also includes growing in divine grace through our communion with Jesus in the Eucharist. We cannot win our spiritual battles without frequent and fruitful reception of the Eucharist. It is in this sacrament that we too like Jesus can “advance in wisdom and age and grace before God and man.”(Lk 2:52)
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, because we have this divine life in us today, we, though sinners, must struggle to grow in this life and spread it in our world of evil. Jesus wills this, “Let them grow together until the harvest.” This divinely willed struggle is both a sign of divine life in us as well as a prerequisite for this life to grow in us and spread to others.
We cannot dispense ourselves from this struggle and pretend that we can indulge in a life of sin without disastrous eternal consequences, “The angels 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.” Only eternal and fruitless regret awaits us if we refuse to embrace the grace-filled and meritorious struggle with sin and evil here on earth.
Our only choice is to humbly embrace this struggle with darkness using all the helps that Jesus offers us – Holy Spirit, prayer, mercy, time, Mama Mary and sacramental graces – and embark on a life of unending struggle for the sake of Him who entered into mortal combat with death and prevailed for our salvation. We will surely have occasional defeats and failures as we live in this world. We must remind ourselves that this is not the time to shine in final victory and triumph over sin and evil. Besides, we have that assurance that Christ’s light in us will ultimately prevail over darkness if we do not abandon the struggle.
But the beautiful and mysterious thing is that we slowly become more and more like Jesus as we struggle with personal sin and social evils for Him and like Him to the very end. And as we become like Jesus, we shall be more constant in radiating divine goodness and slowly become the ones who Jesus lovingly describes as “the righteous ones who will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.”
Glory to Jesus!!! Honor to Mary!!!
✠
Photo by Mindaugas Norvilas on Unsplash