Young Catholic Students are called to resist evil and promote good in their motto "See, Judge and act" because when you nip evil in the bud, you truncate its capacity to full growth. For anyone to allow evil to stay is to have access to full subscription, remember too, whatever you feed will grow. Sin grows, evil grows, and evil people grow from mild sins to severe distortions just as King David started with pornography, developed in adultery, and ended in murder. However, the gospel today seems to have toed a countercultural line of thought that does not support evil to be uprooted as soon as it spotted which cast shadows on moral judgement. While It is striking in the gospel to think weed and wheat must grow together until the harvest; we need to look closely at the profound teachings of Jesus to determine why?
The gospel reading cast Jesus in the role of wisdom teacher using metaphorical techniques to make his points. He presents the farmer as one who demonstrates patience and wisdom as he told them this is not the time for a radical response but to let everything stay till the day of reckoning. In the first instance, the farmer didn't sow the evil seed, He spotted it but did nothing, rather He did something. He made a judgement call on what's best for the vineyard. Like a leader who is not hasty or irrational in the decision-making process, he valued that the decision was not about the removal of the weed but the preservation of the wheat. The farmer showed a paradoxical intention of making a good reaction out of a bad situation as this world is a mixture of divine seed and human soil. While the devil you know is still a devil, the desire to save the soul must be given priority.
In context, weeds can be lost, but souls must be saved and restored. When it comes to sinners God does not rule by hasty decisions without deep and meditative reflection, He does not apply the spontaneity to remove sinners from the world the way the masters of this world would sack their servants from works or withhold their salaries. God does not treat us as we are, He loves us as Himself. In his divine Love, he judges and governs with might tempered with mercy and uses his power with clemency. The psalmist described Him as "good and forgiving" because of His leniency and clemency. That is one virtue we need to learn from God; how to understand the dynamics of a second chance. As humans, we must stop casting sins on stones and engraving them in our hearts but learn from Jesus who wrote on sands so that the winds of forgiveness can blow them off.
Jesus did not focus on how bad people were, it was to let them know that they needed a relationship with God who allows the sun to rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and unjust. (Mt 5;45). His pastoral approach is worth emulating because he believes good morality would flow out while focusing on good relationships. When we realise how we are turning out as clogs in the wheel of growth and development, the Lord points it out to us that its time to have a change of heart, so that we can stop acting badly". St Paul teaches us that spiritual growth is not something we can do by ourselves we need God, and we need prayer, which isn't a sign of weakness, it's the beginning of strength. In this regard, the Thomistic teaching clears us that no one is a devil's incarnate or intrinsically evil lest we commit an ontological fallacy that is Thomistically unpardonable (Fada Obi innocent, 2000). Thus, applying the parable to us, the baby must not be thrown out with the bathwater but carried to the font of redemption where the 7 weeds of pride, greed, lust, envy, anger, gluttony and sloth would be cleansed by divine and merciful Love.
However, Jesus made a distinction between those who were interested in changing their lives and those who were not willing to accept his words. Though he loves sinners, he condemns evil as evil is infectious and contagious with a very damaging effect. The Lord reminds us that we are not "bankers of sins" and there is no profit in saving sin to grow like hair. Every day is our harvest day before God as no one knows the hour or time when the Lord will come, which puts us in the right perspective to say no to evil. The day of reckoning can be today and not tomorrow. This point signals why he would end his parable saying 'he who has ears, let him hear" to assure us that everyone can change and be offered the opportunity of growth based solely upon their willingness to accept it.
This gospel message aligns with the psychopathology of sin. Though sin can be extreme and even gruesome, the cure is not to fix people but to help lost souls find their way home. Sin is like addiction to substance misuse where people medicate against painful and depressive feelings in their social problem but find out that habits are not easy to break. Then, Jesus offers them the soothing palm of cognitive restructuring that sins must be forgiven several times as effective change is not just a one-off decision but the result of a whole process.
Dear friends in Christ, the Lord wants us to know that you can find many examples of bad people in the world, but you can also see that you can be surrounded by some excellent people too. Also, we can find something to love in even the most difficult people and not dismiss or write them off, at least, they are suitable references for how-not-to-act. While we should not be surprised that there are people with a watermelon personality trait, they may appear as righteous but inside is full of hypocrisy and wickedness; what is important is God should give them a change of heart. It might be challenging to accept that we are not all good people, but we are always in search of good people, loving people and kind people without knowing that the first recipe of goodness is to become one. May God have mercy on us and grant his divine word to continue to grow on our human soil. Amen.
@FadaCharles2020.
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