We live in a world that wants instant results.
If your internet takes more than a few seconds, you think something is wrong.
If a website doesn’t load immediately, you refresh it.
If a parcel doesn’t arrive the next day, you wonder where it is.
We’ve become impatient.
We expect everything to happen now.
And perhaps that impatience has crept into our spiritual lives as well.
We want instant holiness.
Instant answers to prayer.
Instant solutions to suffering.
Instant justice.
Yet today’s Gospel teaches us something many of us find difficult.
God is patient.
A farmer sows good seed.
He has done everything right.
Then, under cover of darkness, an enemy comes and sows weeds.
When the crop begins to grow, the servants are horrified.
They ask the obvious question:
“Do you want us to go and gather them?”
Let’s fix the problem.
Let’s sort it out.
Let’s do it now.
But the farmer says something unexpected.
“No.”
Why?
Because in trying to pull up the weeds, they may pull up the wheat as well.
So he waits.
Not because he cannot act.
But because he knows more than his servants.
That is often how God appears to us.
We look at the world and ask:
“Lord, why don’t You do something?”
Why does evil seem to flourish?
Why do dishonest people prosper?
Why are good people suffering?
Why is there so much confusion?
Why doesn’t God simply remove evil?
The answer Jesus gives is surprising.
Because God is patient.
Not weak.
Patient.
Think of a school classroom.
One child struggles with reading.
Another with behaviour.
Another with confidence.
Imagine if the teacher gave up after one bad week.
“You’re hopeless.”
“You’ll never learn.”
Out they go.
There would be no education.
Good teachers are patient because they can see not only what a child is today, but what that child could become.
God sees us like that.
He sees not only our failures.
He sees the saint we could become.
Think of a gardener.
When you plant a tree, you do not dig it up every morning to see whether it has grown.
You water it.
You care for it.
You wait.
Growth takes time.
The saints did not become saints overnight.
St Peter needed years.
St Augustine needed years.
St Monica prayed for decades.
God works slowly because He is growing people, not manufacturing products.
The first reading says something extraordinary about God.
“Though you are sovereign in strength, you judge with mildness, and with great forbearance you govern us.”
The all-powerful God chooses patience.
That is not how we usually imagine power.
The world thinks power means crushing your enemies.
Winning every argument.
Having the last word.
God reveals His power by giving sinners another chance.
And another.
And another.
How many times has He done that for us?
There is another lesson in today’s Gospel.
The servants are very confident they know which plants are weeds.
The master is much more careful.
That should make us pause.
Our culture is quick to judge.
One mistake and someone is cancelled.
One foolish comment online and thousands condemn them.
People are labelled.
Written off.
Dismissed.
No opportunity to change.
No room for mercy.
The Gospel is different.
It never calls evil good.
But neither does it give up on people.
Because today’s weed may become tomorrow’s saint.
Think of St Paul.
If you had met him before his conversion, you would probably have said,
“There’s a weed.”
God saw an apostle.
That is also true in our own lives.
Sometimes we become discouraged because we still struggle.
The same sins.
The same weaknesses.
The same temptations.
We wonder,
“Why hasn’t God changed me yet?”
The answer may simply be this.
He is still at work.
God is patient with us.
The question is:
Are we patient with Him?
St Paul gives us another comfort.
“The Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.”
Have you ever tried to pray and found no words?
Perhaps after bad news.
After a funeral.
During illness.
When life simply feels overwhelming.
Paul says even then you are not praying alone.
The Holy Spirit is praying within you.
When your words fail…
His do not.
When your strength is gone…
His remains.
Even our weakness becomes a place where God’s grace is at work.
Then Jesus tells two tiny parables.
A mustard seed.
A little yeast.
Both seem insignificant.
Yet both quietly change everything.
That is how God’s Kingdom grows.
Not always through spectacular events.
But through ordinary faithfulness.
One family saying grace before meals.
One child learning to pray.
One person returning to Confession.
One elderly parishioner faithfully coming to Mass every Sunday.
One quiet act of forgiveness.
One invitation to church.
The Kingdom often grows in ways the world never notices.
But Heaven notices.
Perhaps that is the greatest temptation today.
We measure everything by numbers.
Followers.
Views.
Likes.
Subscribers.
Jesus measures differently.
He asks:
Are you faithful?
Not:
Are you famous?
Faithfulness changes the world.
Quietly.
Like yeast.
Like a mustard seed.
So perhaps today’s Gospel is asking us to stop demanding instant results.
In ourselves.
In other people.
Even in the Church.
God has not finished His work.
Not in the world.
Not in your family.
Not in this parish.
Not in you.
The harvest has not yet come.
So do not lose heart.
Keep praying.
Keep coming to Mass.
Keep going to Confession.
Keep forgiving.
Keep sowing good seed.
Because the patient God who began His work in you will bring it to completion.
And on the day of the harvest, you will discover that nothing done for Christ was ever wasted.
St. Mary's, St. John Bosco and St. Edward's 