These reflections treat the parables of Christ not as moral fables or theological propositions but as precise descriptions of psychological structure — the inner architecture of a human being who contains, simultaneously, forces that serve awakening and forces that oppose it. The question posed today is one that anyone engaged in serious self-observation will recognize: what do you do with the parts of yourself that seem to work against everything you value? The answer given here is stranger and more exacting than any moralism could provide.
First reading
Wisdom of Solomon 12:13,16-19 (World English Bible)
For neither is there any God beside you that careth for all, That you might show to him that you did not judge unrighteously:
For your strength is the beginning of righteousness, And your sovereignty over all makes you to forbear all.
For when men believe not that you are perfect in power, you show your strength, And in dealing with those who know it you put their boldness to confusion.
But you, being sovereign over your strength, judge in gentleness, And with great forbearance do you govern us;
For the power is your whenever you have the will.
But you did teach your people by such works as these, How that the righteous must be a lover of men;
And you did make your sons to be of good hope, Because you give repentance when men have sinned.
Gospel
Matthew 13:24-43
Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field:
But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way.
But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also.
So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, did not you sow good seed in your field? from whence then hath it tares?
He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Will you then that we go and gather them up?
But he said, Nay; lest while you gather up the tares, you root up also the wheat with them.
Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather you together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field:
Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.Another parable spoke he unto them;
The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.
All these things spoke Jesus unto the multitude in parables; and without a parable spoke he not unto them:
That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world.
Then Jesus sent the multitude away, and went into the house: and his disciples came unto him, saying, Declare unto us the parable of the tares of the field.
He answered and said unto them, He that sows the good seed is the Son of man;
The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one;
The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels.
As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world.
The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity;
And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.
— Interpretation —
The readings appointed for this day — the sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time — place before us a cluster of parables from the thirteenth chapter of Matthew, culminating in the great parable of the wheat and the tares. And it is here, in this particular teaching, that we encounter one of the most psychologically startling instructions in all of scripture: the command to leave the tares alone.
Let us consider what is being said. A man sows good seed in his field. While men slept — and we must pause at that phrase, for in the language of inner meaning sleep is never incidental; it is the fundamental condition of mechanical man — while men slept, an enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat. The servants, upon discovering the weeds, are eager. They want to act at once. “Shall we go and gather them up?” And the householder says, with extraordinary calm: No. Lest while you gather up the tares, you root up also the wheat with them.
Now if we take this parable as referring only to the external world — to good and bad people mixed together in society — we arrive at a kind of truism about divine patience, and we go no further. But if we understand that the field is ourselves, that the wheat and tares grow together in the soil of our own being, then the instruction becomes something far more demanding and far more precise.
Every person who begins to observe themselves discovers, sooner or later, that they contain contradictory impulses. There are moments of genuine understanding, of real feeling, of something finer trying to grow — and threaded through these, inseparable from them at first glance, are vanity, self-pity, resentment, mechanical ambition, the desire to appear good rather than to be good. These are the tares. And the first impulse — the servants’ impulse — is always the same: root them out. Attack them. Suppress them violently. Hate yourself for having them.
Christ says: No. Let both grow together until the harvest.
This is not moral laxity. It is not an invitation to indulge what is false in oneself. It is something far subtler. It is the recognition that premature violence against one’s own negative states can destroy the very thing that is trying to grow. A man who attacks his own vanity with self-hatred is still operating from vanity — from the demand that he be better than he is, which is itself a form of self-love. The roots are entangled. You cannot yet tell, at this stage of growth, which root belongs to what.
The harvest — the separation — comes later. It comes when a man has grown enough wheat, enough real understanding, that the distinction between what is true in him and what is false becomes unmistakable. The angels, the reapers — these are higher influences, higher states of consciousness, that can make the separation cleanly, without destroying the living thing. But this requires patience. It requires what the reading from Wisdom calls forbearance — sovereignty over strength. The power is yours whenever you have the will, says the text. And yet the righteous must be a lover of men. Even, we might say, a lover of the man within oneself who is not yet what he could be.
Then we are given two further parables in quick succession, and they deserve attention as a pair. The mustard seed — the smallest of seeds becoming the greatest of herbs — speaks to the nature of real understanding. A single moment of genuine self-awareness, a single flash of seeing oneself without justification or condemnation, is almost nothing. It is negligible. And yet it contains within itself the possibility of an entire transformation. It grows, if it is not crushed, into something that can shelter other things — other perceptions, other feelings — that could not exist without it.
And then the leaven hidden in three measures of meal. Here leaven is used positively — not as the leaven of the Pharisees, which corrupts through literalism and self-righteousness, but as the hidden action of higher meaning working through the whole of a person. Three measures of meal: we might think of these as the intellectual, emotional, and physical dimensions of a human being. The leaven works silently through all three until the whole is transformed.
Notice the hiddenness. The mustard seed is buried in the earth. The leaven is hidden in the meal. The wheat grows alongside tares and is indistinguishable from them to the untrained eye. Everything essential about inner transformation is invisible to the mechanical mind. It cannot be displayed. It cannot be rushed. It cannot be performed.
Who hath ears to hear, let him hear. That phrase is not decoration. It is a test. It separates those who take these words as pleasant metaphors from those who recognize in them a description of something they have actually experienced — the long, patient, often humiliating work of allowing what is real in oneself to grow strong enough, at last, to stand apart from what is not.
Photo by Sarah Mason on Unsplash
Scripture: King James Version
