There used to be a cartoon in The Herald featuring a delightful rogue called Andy Capp. One day he eyes a smartly dressed young lady and the local vicar happens to be passing and notices. He feels bound to remonstrate but before he can open his mouth, Andy says, “I know, Vicar, there’s so much good in the worst of us, an’ so much bad in the best of us, it is difficult to tell which of us ought to reform the rest of us, Eh?”
Jesus’ story of the wheat and the weeds makes the same point: ‘do not remove the weed now in case you pull up the wheat at the same time. Let them grow till the harvest; then the reapers will separate the good from the bad.’ We live in a mixed reality. We would love everyone to obey traffic rules but they don’t: they cut in ahead of you, they overtake on the left, etc. Louis Armstrong wrote a song ‘Oh! What a wonderful world.’ Well, it is not that wonderful. It is very messy.
We find it in ourselves. We have many gifts and do well. But we are aware of our darker side: our selfishness, our avoidance of challenges, our judgement of others, etc. In this, we are no different from famous people – even saints. In a recent short study of St John Henry Newman, Eamon Duffy, the Cambridge historian wrote; ‘Newman strove all his life for holiness but he had more than his share of human frailties. He could be tyrannical in friendship, he was thin-skinned and easily offended, slow to forgive, even at times implacable.’
It has been said that we have the ‘weaknesses of our strengths’. I used to work under the leadership of a Jesuit who had been a British officer in India during the war. He was a strong leader in the sense that he was focused on getting the job done. But he could trample on many toes in the process; leaving people angry, frustrated and with a feeling of being used.
In conclusion, we can say the wheat needs the weeds! In some mysterious way, opposition – even from within ourselves – brings out the best in us. Our journey to holiness calls us to make friends – not enemies – of our spontaneous negative reactions.
Christian asceticism today is no longer about flagellating ourselves but integrating our passions into our personality in a way that reflects the values of the Beatitudes. Yesterday, we celebrated St Mary Magdalene. She was a shining example of this. It can be even harder to do than carrying out the exterior penances we were encouraged to practice at an earlier age.
23 July 2023 Sunday 16 A Wis 12:13-19 Rom 8:26-27 Mt 13:24-30
Post published in: Faith