Mt 13:36-43 Weeds and Wheat

Mathew 13:36-43 Weeds and Wheat

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“Just as the weeds are collected now and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age.” There is no denying it. There is Supreme Justice. There is a Day of Judgment. You can believe it or not but it will happen. Karl Marx wrote that religion was “the opium of the people, of the oppressed.” He was obviously wrong. In reality, ideologies, such as Marxism, are the opium of the people. They claim you can do whatever you want and not be concerned about a day of judgment. Who is fooling who? The Lord is clear in his warning; we will pay now and later for the sins we commit today.

A well known professor in Italy walked out of his classroom and never went back. Not out of disgust, but out of necessity. One day, some former students saw him at the corner of a major intersection with a hand-written sign. It read, “The sin you commit today, you will pay for now and later.” He left education convinced that the greatest lesson he could teach his students was to teach them that sin is real and so are its consequences. Jesus reminds us, “Do not be afraid of the one who can kill the body. Rather, be afraid of the one that can kill both the body and the soul” (Mt 10:24-33).

The weeds are among us. Do what the Lord commands. Preach the Gospel of Life, the Gospel of Truth - the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Make someone’s day. Do not conceal the truth out of fear. Do not hesitate to speak in the light. Do not be ashamed to proclaim the Gospel from the housetops or from the street corners. “Everyone who acknowledges me, before others,” says the Lord, “I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father” (Mt 10:32). This morning I celebrated Mass in Rochester, New York, at a Carmelite Monastery. It was the feast day for Blessed Titus Brandsma, a priest of the Ancient Observance, he defied the anti-Catholic orders of the Nazi invaders of his native Holland and was sent to Dachau where he died. The greatest testimony of his life came from the same person who killed him by lethal injection, a weed turned into wheat. Sometimes it appears as though it is the wheat that gets burned, not the weeds. But that is the vail of the cross, where defeat appears to be imminent, but in reality it is the glory of God, the victory of the Cross, the empty tomb, the raising to glory of the Lord and all those who follow him. Titus Brandsma lives on and his enemies are dead and gone. Now that is worth all the attention in the world! And the bad press you’ll get!