One of the hardest questions people ask is this:
Why is there so much evil in the world?
If God is good…
Why do innocent people suffer?
Why is there war?
Why is there violence?
Why does evil seem to flourish?
Jesus does not avoid the question.
He answers it in today’s Gospel.
Our Lord told the crowds the parable of the wheat and the weeds.
Now He explains it.
The field is the world.
The good seed are the children of the Kingdom.
The weeds are the children of the evil one.
The enemy is the devil.
Notice something.
Jesus does not pretend evil is an illusion.
Nor does He say God created it.
The weeds were not planted by the farmer.
They were planted by “an enemy.”
God is the author of all that is good.
Evil enters the world because humanity rejected God, and because there is one who delights in destroying what God has made.
Yet there is another question.
If God is all-powerful…
Why does He not simply remove the weeds?
Why does He allow evil to continue?
Because if He removed every sinner immediately, none of us would be here.
God’s patience is not weakness.
It is mercy.
He gives time for repentance.
Time for conversion.
Time for grace to work.
How many saints once looked like weeds before God transformed them into wheat?
St Paul persecuted the Church.
St Augustine lived a life far from God.
St Mary Magdalene had a troubled past.
Yet grace changed them.
God sees what we can become, not only what we are now.
But Jesus also reminds us that patience is not the same as indifference.
The harvest will come.
There will be a judgement.
Good and evil are not equal.
Truth and falsehood are not equal.
One day God will put everything right.
Justice delayed is not justice denied.
The first reading gives us another picture.
Jeremiah looks upon the devastation caused by sin.
The people have turned away from God.
The land mourns.
The nation suffers.
Jeremiah does not pretend everything is fine.
Nor does he blame God.
Instead he prays.
“Though our iniquities testify against us, act, O Lord, for your name’s sake.”
He admits the people’s sin.
Yet he throws himself upon God’s mercy.
Then comes one of the most beautiful lines in the reading.
“Are there any among the false gods of the nations that can bring rain? Or can the heavens give showers?”
The answer is obvious.
No.
Only the Lord can save.
Only the Lord can give life.
Only the Lord can restore what sin has destroyed.
That remains true today.
We often look for salvation in the wrong places.
Politics.
Technology.
Money.
Success.
Pleasure.
They all promise happiness.
None can save the human heart.
Only Christ can do that.
There is another lesson hidden in today’s Gospel.
Jesus tells us not only about the world.
He also tells us about ourselves.
The battle between wheat and weeds is not only out there.
It is in here.
Every heart contains both generosity and selfishness.
Faith and doubt.
Love and pride.
Each day we decide which will grow.
The Christian life is not simply pointing out the weeds in everyone else’s field.
It is allowing Christ to make us into good wheat.
The wonderful news is that God never gives up on His harvest.
Every Confession is another chance to pull out the weeds.
Every Holy Communion strengthens the wheat.
Every prayer opens our hearts a little more to His grace.
The Lord is patient because He wants every one of us to become saints.
So today let us not lose heart when we see evil in the world.
Nor let us become discouraged by the weeds within our own hearts.
Instead, let us trust in the mercy Jeremiah proclaimed and the hope Christ promises.
For the Lord who patiently tends His field is also the Lord of the harvest.
And if we remain faithful to Him, then on that last day, as Jesus says,
“the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.”
May that promise strengthen us to persevere, trusting that God’s mercy is greater than our sin, and His harvest is greater than all the weeds the enemy has sown.
St. Mary's, St. John Bosco and St. Edward's 