A Reflection for Tuesday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time
Find today’s readings here.
“He who sows good seed is the Son of Man,
the field is the world, the good seed the children of the Kingdom.
The weeds are the children of the Evil One,
and the enemy who sows them is the Devil” (Mt 13:36-38).
Why did you pick your confirmation saint? That was the question put to the staff of America for an article published in May of this year. I sheepishly declined to participate because, frankly, I wasn’t 100 percent sure who I had chosen. I thought maybe it was St. Anne, but I didn’t know why I would have chosen the mother of the Virgin Mary then, nor do I have a particular devotion to her today.
I know many 12-year-olds are not particularly serious about their faith and choose confirmation saints for what may seem like superficial reasons. But I was still troubled by my inability to even remember mine. How did someone so disinterested in her faith end up working at a place that would publish an article about confirmation saints? If I wasn’t paying attention to the confirmation process, how did the sacrament “work”? I suppose I was really asking: How was God working in my life back then?
Today’s Gospel reading from Matthew provides a clue. In it, Jesus explains to his disciples the parable of the weeds among the wheat. A man has sown good seeds, but in the night, an enemy planted weeds in the field. The logic of the man’s slaves is to pull up the weeds, yet the master counsels them to wait until the harvest. At the time of planting, it is hard to distinguish the good seed from the bad. But in time it will be clear. Patience is required.
Looking back at myself around the time of my confirmation, the weeds in my life are easy to spot. (One of the few things from the whole process I do remember is skipping class with my friend one Sunday to go see the stairs in Georgetown where the iconic scene from “The Exorcist” was filmed.) But hindsight also lets me see the good seeds that were being sown, even if I didn’t see or appreciate them then. God was working in my life through loving parents, kind priests and selfless catechists, all carrying out the at times thankless task of passing on the faith to a disinterested teenager. And they were doing so with the patience of the master in today’s parable.
This is not to say that my faith life today is a bushel of wheat. It can still seem easier at times to spot the weeds—the same old sins, the lackluster prayer life. But I know now that the good seeds are still being sown by God in small, perhaps undetectable ways. I just need the patience to see them bear fruit.
