16^th Sunday in Ordinary Time - WEEDS & WHEAT: OUR SPLIT PERSONALITIES

That Darn Darnel

This parable of the wheat and the weeds has a fairly obvious meaning and a less obvious one. The apparent meaning is that, even within the Kingdom of God, good and evil live side by side. And it’s not always so easy to tell them apart. Darnel was a weed that grew in Palestine and looked very much like grain in its early stages. Even experienced farmers would be in danger of pulling up the wheat if they tried to weed out the darnel. So the farmer in the parable decides to leave them both growing until harvest time and sort it all out then.

Let God do the Sorting

The obvious meaning is that it’s not easy to distinguish sinners from saints, and human beings would be better just to let God do the sorting Which leads us to the less obvious meaning - one of the reasons it’s so difficult for us to judge is that most folks are not exclusively weeds or wheat, but a combination of both. We know that we have been created good by God, yet because our nature has been weakened by original sin, we have an attraction to evil. We are good people who sometimes do bad things. No wonder it’s not that easy to tell the sinners from the saints!

Will the Real Schindler Please Stand Up?

Many people have been inspired by the story of Oskar Schindler, the German Industrialist who saved over a thousand Polish Jews from the Nazi concentration camps. Steven Spielberg told his story in the film Schindler’s List about 15 years ago. One of the people that Schindler saved said of him: “He was our mother, our father, our only hope. He never let us down.” Yet many who saw that great movie about him were surprised and even a bit put off by his vices. Schindler was a man endowed with the whole range of human frailties. He comes across as something of a moral puzzle.

Schindler was no saint. He was unfaithful to his wife and certainly knew how to enjoy the good life - cigars, drink, women. He was Catholic but in name only. At one point in the film he says: “My father was fond of saying you need three things in life - a good doctor, a forgiving priest and a clever accountant - the first two I’ve never had much use for!” Schindler was also good at looking out for his own interests. His stated goal was to end the war with two trunks full of money. He was quite willing to exploit the Jewish people as a source of cheap labour.

But there was another, better side to Schindler, and in spite of his frequent lapses, he always returned to that better side. There was a basic goodness about him. As the war went on he became appalled at the horrors of the Final Solution. At great personal risk he protected his workers from the death camps and managed to smuggle them out of Poland. He was a hero; an essentially good man but a seriously flawed one. There is a moving scene at the end of the film where he chastises himself for not having done more. He says to a friend: “ I could have got more out. If I’d made more money. This car - I could have sold it. Why did I keep the car? Ten people right there. Ten more people. This pin - it’s gold. Two more people. At least one. One more person, for this.” Schindler apparently understood how both good and evil, strength and frailty co-existed in him.

Uprooting the Weeds

Some people don’t have much understanding of the divided nature of each human being: of how good and bad, strength and weakness can live side by side in a person. But human beings are complex, and that includes each one of us. We are mixture of wheat and weeds; and it’s not easy to uproot the weeds, at least right away. We have to acknowledge the dark side of ourselves without conceding victory to it. It means being patient with ourselves, not excusing our sins but committing ourselves to a long process of rooting them out of our lives. In his book on the Sacrament of Confession, Scott Hahn writes that one day he complained to his priest-confessor: “I don’t seem to make any progress - I just confess the same sins again and again.” So the priest asked him, “What’s your point, Scott? That you’d prefer to commit new sins?” That quip helped Hahn to appreciate that struggling against those same sins was a long journey of spiritual growth - and that in itself was a kind of progress.  

Rush to Judgement

All the more then, do we need to be patient and lenient with others. If we are a combination of wheat and weeds, the same holds for everyone else. Even though we see only part of a person’s life, we are so quick to rush to judgement. Often we don’t have much sympathy when we discover a weakness in someone. All too easily, we write people off. By concentrating on people’s vices, we become blind to their virtues. How much different would things be if we tried to see the good in everyone, to encourage it and bring it out.

If this parable tells us anything, it is that only God has the right and the knowledge to judge, and God is patient and tolerant. A person will be judged, not by a single act or stage in their life, but by their entire life. That is why judgement can’t come until the end. That’s why it remains the province of God. We who live our lives in the tangled field of wheat and weeds, will wisely leave the judgement of God. And we should never forget that it is from flawed and fickle people that God makes great saints.

Father Dan Miehm

July 20, 2008