Aug 7 Mon
We are told that the Church is holy. How can that be? We know her history well enough to know about all kinds of unholiness in the Church. Also, we know that we ourselves – members of the Church – are beset by sin. Still, in our Creeds we confess that the Church is holy. The parable of the wheat and the tares (Matthew 13:24-43) might shed some light on this doctrine. The parable describes how man would sow tares or cockle in his enemy’s wheat field.
As our Lord makes clear, the Church – the children of the kingdom – is the good seed that the Father has sown in the world. Thus, the Church is holy. She is no mere human creation but the foundation and household of God, planted by his hand, established as the Body of Christ. The Church is a tree growing upside down, with her roots in heaven and her branches here on earth.
But the Church exists in a fallen world, and the enemy is active. As the parable makes clear, he sows bad seed AMONG the children of the kingdom. There is poison, in effect, even WITHIN the Church. The problem is the bad seed looks a lot like the good. So, the householder instructs his servants to wait: “Let them grow together until harvest.” At that point, he will be able to discern and to judge.
A first lesson of the parable is that we shouldn’t be surprised by wickedness and dishonesty in the Church. Disappointed, grieved, and angry – yes. But not surprised. The existence of weeds among the wheat has been evident from the earliest years of the Church down to the present day.
The parable is also a lesson about God’s patience. The Father calls us to the highest standard, to holiness itself. But he is patient with us in our striving for it.
There is a place for identifying and correcting those who have strayed. But it’s for the shepherds to do, not the sheep. This parable is addressed to the crowds, not the Apostles.
The bishops have a right to discipline because they have a duty to do so. Such discipline seeks the good of souls by clarifying teaching and preventing scandal. But when the shepherds don’t discipline, then members of the Church lose patience, take it upon themselves to uproot the cockle and pull up a lot of wheat with it.
Are you wheat or a weed? We participate in God’s patience, when we neither judge someone a bad seed… nor presume that we are good. His grace is at work within each one of us, bidding us to turn to him and grow in holiness.
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