7/23/2023

Dear Parishioners,
I am happy to be here and to assist Fr. Albert your pastor, as we grow in our faith life through the Word of God through our weekly celebration of the Eucharist. So I believe understanding the weekly scripture readings are a key way to grow in our faith life. So, my reflections will be on the scripture readings for this Sunday.
Today’s readings tell us about a very patient and compassionate God who is hopeful that the so called “weeds” among us will be converted and that we should not be in a hurry to eliminate such elements from the Church or society, or the family based on unwarranted and hasty judgment. The first reading gives us a picture of a merciful and patient God rather than the strict, angry, and judging God presented in the book of Genesis. The second reading reminds us that the Spirit of God goes on empowering us in our weakness and hence we should be patient with ourselves. Finally in the Gospel parable of the wheat and the weeds Jesus assures us that we are the field of God. We are the ground He works on as well as the plants He nurtures. We are the people he rests His hopes upon and the folk He plants His seed in. We are the congregation He anoints with his Spirit. In today’s parable Jesus presents a wise and patient God who allows the good and the evil to coexist in the world so that the evil ones may come to conversion before their time ends and He must punish them. "Let the seed and the darnel grow together till the harvest time". In other words, God awaits repentant sinners, giving them the strength to acknowledge their weakness. God calmly recognizes that there is evil in the world but sees that evil as no excuse for the good people not to do good, with God’s power at their disposal. Through the parable of the wheat and the weeds in today’s gospel, Jesus calls us to be patient with those who fail to meet the high ethical standard expected of a Christian.
The question is how do we deal with the weeds in our lives, in others and the world?
We need to practice patience. First of all, we need to be patient with ourselves. We may not get everything perfectly done this week, but so what? Then we must be patient with the others – those who annoy us by the way they drive their cars, those whose opinions differ from ours, those who make too much noise and disturb us and those who make our spiritual progress more difficult for us by their bad example and counter-witnessing. Let’s practice patience, remembering that, in the end, it is God who controls. Let us patiently and lovingly treat the “weeds” in our society as our brothers and sisters and do all in our power to put them back on the right road to heaven, especially by our good example and our fervent prayer for their conversion.
Here is a weed gatherer: A teenage daughter asks her father, "Why don't you go to church?" He replies, "Because the church is full of hypocrites." "What do you mean by a hypocrite?" she asks. He thinks for a moment and answers, ‘A hypocrite’ says one thing and does another.”
“That sounds just like you, Daddy!” she replies. “I’m no hypocrite!” He responds. "Yes, you are," she says. "you tell me that going to church is important. You say that I must go to church, but then you don't go. You say one thing and do another. Doesn't that make you a hypocrite? I wish you could go with me because there is room in the church for one more hypocrite." We must practice patience, remembering that, in the end it is God who is in charge and judges us, so we must not judge others as weeds or even wheat.

Love and Peace, Fr. Karl