Sunday, July 20, 2014

Homily: 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Weeds or Wheat: "Who am I to judge?"

This week on Friday, July 17, we celebrated the Feast of St. Camillus de Lellis. 

Many of the Saints were extremely holy throughout their lives: St. Bernadette was a very holy and humble young girl, St. Maria Goretti was courageously protected her chastity out of love for Jesus Christ and was martyred at the age of twelve, the polish Jesuit novice St. Stanislaws Kostka was deeply pious and humble.  Not so with St. Camillus.  He gave his parents nothing but trouble.  He got into fights with neighborhood boys, he skipped school, he learned, but wouldn’t say his prayers; he was so quick to unleash his violent temper that his mother was actually afraid of him.

At the age of seventeen, Camillus joined his father as a mercenary soldier, and he quickly picked up a lot of the vices of the military camps—swearing, gambling, drinking, and visiting prostitutes.  He and his father, Giovanni, even teamed up as father and son con artists, swindling their fellow soldiers.  They went from camp to camp when Camillus’ father fell seriously ill. 

To Camillus’ surprise, Giovanni sent him to fetch a priest, and after Giovanni made a good confession, repenting from all his sins and crimes, he received Holy Communion for the last time and died.

This was a turning point in Camillus’ life…sort of. He was deeply touched by his father’s deathbed conversion.  If his father, a life-long gambler and conartist could have faith, then so could Camillus.  One of his uncles was a Franciscan, so Camillus thought he might give religious life a try.  But that didn’t last long; he soon fell into gambling again. And this time his luck really ran out—he lost everything and became homeless.
God’s grace broke into his life when a local business owner gave him a job doing menial construction work.  Here Camillus began to acquire two virtues he had never cultivated before: self-discipline and responsibility.  Through work he realized his dignity. 

When his construction job was done he set out for Rome to work at the famous Hospital of San Giacomo.  There, he found great joy and his vocation in nursing the sick and giving the desperately ill a clean, comfortable place to die.  He was ordained a priest and spent the last thirty years of his life dedicated to the sick.

What a conversion!  At many points in his life, it seemed unlikely that Camillus would come to such great holiness.  Perhaps, there are some of us here, who like Camillus, were on the wrong path; maybe like him, we even started off that way.  Maybe, there are members of our family who seem now trapped in an endless cycle of poor decisions.

The life of Camillus and our Gospel this weekend remind us that we must be patient.  Everyone we meet might be one act of kindness away from getting back on the right road toward God. 
Our Lord tells us that weeds and wheat often grow in the same field.  Even expert farmers have a difficult time telling the difference between the two while they are still growing.  It is only at harvest time when the two can be distinguished.

So we must be patient with everyone who is struggling to find the right path, and not write them off. 
And like the wealthy man who gave St. Camillus the job which was the turning point in his life, we too are called to be instruments of God’s grace in the lives of others. 

A few months ago, there was a media storm around a comment Pope Francis made…imagine that.  He dared to utter those dangerous words, “Who am I to judge?”

In his comment, the Holy Father was basically quoting scripture.  “There is only one lawgiver and judge,” writes St. James in his Epistle.  “He is the one able to save and destroy.  So, who are you to judge your neighbor?” 

Neither the Pope, nor any Christian, can point to anyone and say, that person is definitely going to Hell because of their sins.  Such a judgment is reserved only to God.  Pope Francis isn’t telling us to throw away the Catechism and ignore the Scriptures because all roads lead to heaven. He’s just saying, he’s not the one who makes the rules and none of us are either.

Our Gospel this weekend is very clear that there are eternal consequences for rejecting God’s law.  There will be, a separation at the end of time, weed from wheat, sheep from goats, the saved from the damned, those who accepted God’s grace and those who rejected it, the righteous from the evil doers.

Though Pope Francis does not claim to be the judge of souls, he still teaches us how to form right judgment.  We need rightly formed minds and hearts so that we can discern the good from the evil, the path that leads to heaven from the path that leads to hell.  Sometimes it’s not so easy to tell the difference.  Sometimes our minds and hearts want to go one way, and our bodies want to go the other.

Right judgment is called by St. Paul one of the fruits of the spirit.  But good fruit only comes from healthy plants.   That the fruit of fruit judgment may grow we need to remaining rooted in Christ’s truth; and cultivate our faith by reading the scripture, studying the catechism, daily prayer, fasting, and avoiding the poisonous and corrupting elements of our culture.

In his letter to the Romans St. Paul writes, “Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.”  If we are conformed to this behaviors and attitudes of our culture, we will not be able to discern God’s will.  We don’t learn right from wrong by imitating the morally defunct souls on MTV.

No doubt, we must be very careful about what we hear and see on television and the internet.  As our Lord teaches in the Gospel, there is an enemy sowing weeds out there.   There is a powerful force which reviles the Church, mocks her moral teachings, invents lies about her history, and distorts her doctrines.  The world labels the Church as intolerant because she resists caving to the world’s corruption.

Christians believe that we do have a moral and spiritual responsibility to conform our lives to God’s law, which is unchanging and not determined by a majority vote. 

It is not up to us to judge people as weeds or wheat, but we must certainly avoid those behaviors and attitudes which transgress the moral law and lead to the corruption of our souls. 


Fed by the Eucharist this day, may God’s good fruit continue to flourish in our souls, that we may live lives that are good, and pleasing, and perfect, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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