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.
If you simply looked to the early life of St. Camillus, St. Augustine, St. Francis of Assisi—if you met them as teenagers, you’d think, these guys are doomed. They are living without God. And they aren’t just not going to church on the weekends. Some of them are murderers, thieves, and literal devil worshippers. Our beloved Saint Paul killed Christians. He was leading the charge of hunting down Christians. If you judged him at the moment St. Stephen was being stoned, you’d think, Paul has made himself an enemy of God—definitely a weed if there ever was one.
But amazing grace, despite their sins, God broke into their lives. The lesson? We must never write anyone off as incapable of conversion—not even satanists a persecutors of the Church. We must be patient. We must continue to preach, teach, pray, and witness.
You may have heard about or seen on my Facebook account, that saturday morning I discovered some pretty nasty Satanic graffiti in front of our front church steps. There are wiccans and witches and satanists in this neighborhood. Are they weeds or wheat? If we are faithful in our mission, they might turn out to be wheat. We owe it to pray for them, and to do penance for them, and witness to them. And, like countless souls before them, they may respond to grace, and turn out to be beautiful wheat for the kingdom of God. Our efforts for them will not go to waste.
You may remember, a number of years ago, rather early on in his pontificate, there was a media storm around a comment Pope Francis made. The Holy Father was asked about the eternal consequences of a priest who had forsaken his vows and was living in a way contrary to the Gospel. And the Holy Father declared, “Who am I to judge?” In this pronouncement, the Holy Father was articulating a truth that is very clear in scripture and tradition. St. James writes in his epistle: “There is only one lawgiver and judge. He is the one able to save and destroy. So, who are you to judge your neighbor?”
St. James is saying that neither the Pope, nor any Christian, can point to anyone and say, that person is definitely going to Hell because of their sins. That person is definitely a weed. Such a judgment is reserved to God alone. The weeds and wheat will be sorted out on judgment day by God, the one and only judge.
But to be clear, Pope Francis is not saying that because only God can judge us that we can live however we want. He’s not saying we can ignore God’s commands, throw away the Catechism and disregard Scripture because all roads lead to heaven. He’s not saying we should disregard the Lord’s mandate to preach the Gospel to everyone. No, he is saying nothing of the sort. He’s just saying, he’s not the one who makes the rules and none of us are either.
The Church is filled with good catholics, bad catholics, hypocritical catholics, fallen away catholics, lukewarm Catholics, heretical catholics, ignorant catholics, catholics who make politics more important than their religion, catholics who use religion for personal gain. Which of them are weeds and which are wheat? Time will tell, and in the end God is judge.
Now of course we should strive to be good Catholics—we should strive to be saints. For one of the reasons why some people do not take Christianity seriously is because of hypocrisy within the visible Church. Or they point to a Catholic family member who isn’t living up to the Gospel ideal and they say, “see, your religion just produces hypocrites”.
The hindu Mahatma Gandhi, famously commented on this phenomenon. He had been educated in western universities, where he was exposed to the beautiful teachings of Christianity, but also witnessed the failure of Christians to live up to those teachings. And when he was asked why he never converted to Christ, he said, "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” Now, too bad, he never spent more time contemplating the meaning of the Lord’s actual teachings, rather than our failures to live up to them.
The presence of sinners in the Church does not prove that the Church’s message or the Church’s sanctifying power is lacking. God permits sinners in the Church to allow us poor sinners the opportunity for repentance. Were he to execute eternal judgment the moment any Christian fell to sin, the Church would be empty and hell would be full. Rather God is so patient with us, and he gives those of us who resemble weeds, as much time as possible to prove we are wheat. And since God is patient, so we all must be patient with each other.
The Church fathers counseled against too quickly and rashly condemning imperfect believers. St. Jerome said, “We should not hastily cut off a brother, since one who is today corrupted with erroneous dogma, may grow wiser tomorrow, and begin to defend the truth.”
It is our task to hold to the Truth as taught by the Church’s Magisterium, to seek the perfection of our own souls, and to assist others in that pursuit, and do our best to not scandalize each other or non-believers too much, and to make reparation for those time when we have.
Personally, I know I’ve given people reasons not to believe in Christ and His Church both before and after ordination. God have mercy on me. But most, if not all of us have as well. But our post-baptismal sinfulness doesn’t mean that we should are to give up on our mission. We’re all imperfect, and we all have old wounds, old habits of thinking and speaking and acting, that aren’t always under the yoke of Christ. But Christ calls us to repentance, conversion, and faithfulness. And likely to apologize to people we have set bad Christian example to.
This week, maybe pray for someone you may set bad example to. Someone you gave reason to disbelieve in the importance of membership within the Church. If you can’t think of anyone, pray for the people I’ve scandalized. But please pray. That despite our feeble evangelizing efforts, despite our bad example, God’s grace may work, that they may see the goodness, the eternal life available to them through the Church, that the mustard seed of faith, that bit of sanctifying yeast, may bloom and blossom, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
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