SUMMER PARABLES – STORIES WITH MORAL LESSONS FOR US
“Jesus proposed another parable to the crowds, saying:
‘The kingdom of heaven may be likened
to a man who sowed good seed in his field. . . and
his enemy came and sowed weeds all through the wheat, and then went off. . . .
The man said to his workers, ‘Let them grow together until harvest;
then at harvest time we will first collect the weeds and bundle them for burning;
then gather the wheat into my barn.’
‘The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed.
It is the smallest of all the seeds,
yet when full-grown it is the largest of plants.’” Matthew 13: 24-25;31-32
These parables follow the section of Matthew’s Gospel that deals with the rejection of Jesus by the Pharisees. (In last week’s Gospel we heard, “Gross is the heart of this people, they will hardly hear with their ears, they have closed their eyes, lest they see and understand, lest they be converted and healed.” Matthew 13:15) Some commentaries say that the purpose of today’s parables is that Jesus’ disciples recognize they (and we), like the Pharisees, have a tendency to close our eyes and ears to many of God’s opportunities for conversion and healing. Don’t we live in a world of wheat and weeds growing together? Do I, as a true disciple, need to be converted and healed while living in a weed-infested wheat field? Does the parable of the mustard seed make us think of a need for conversion in things like how we judge others to be “small seeds” whom we want to keep “small” rather than trying to help them develop their God-given potential to be the “largest” of persons and disciples? We will hear in next week’s Gospel, that our lives are about sacrifice and conversion – selling everything to purchase a “pearl of great price” and separating a catch of fish into good and bad fish.
Perhaps we should see these parables as Jesus’ pleas for us to “open our eyes and ears” to the often missed, “hidden” processes of sacrifice, conversion and healing at work beneath the surface of the beauty within us and the beauty that surrounds us, be it in nature, people or our ordinary everyday surroundings and encounters. Can we hear what God is saying to us by gracing us with these hidden miracles and parables? Let us take time during this summer season of growth to notice what has been here all the time – placed or allowed to be where we can see and hear them – because God wills them to lead us to conversion and healing.
May we be thankful to God and each other for the treasures we find in these hidden miracles and parables. May we see that all discipleship is rooted in honesty, in “seeing and hearing the hidden miracles and warnings,” and in the “reception and transmission of forgiveness,”1 which comes only if we recognize that we are sinners, still very much in need of conversion and healing.
Sister Loretta
- Introduction To Christianity, Joseph Ratzinger, 2nd Edition (Communio Books) (p. 50). Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition.