A World of Weeds and Wheat: Matthew 13:24-30

2 Replies
Tissot

“Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field, ” his disciples ask Jesus. (Matthew 13:36-37)  Why do they want him to explain this parable about the weeds in the field before any other parable, we wonder ? What’s so important about it?

The parable, about a man and his servants who plant wheat, immediately follows Jesus’ opening parable of the sower in Matthew’s gospel. Once the wheat’s planted, they’re ready to go to sleep. All’s done; they have only to wait for the harvest.

But it won’t be so: an enemy comes and plants weeds in the wheat field. You can hear the servants’ distress as they wake up to it. They weren’t expecting this. Their immediate response is to go and pull the weeds up. 

Like the rocky ground Jesus describes in the parable of the sower, they hear the word and receive it with joy, but “when some tribulation or persecution comes because of the word” they fall away. (Matthew 13:20-21) They’re overwhelmed by the sight of weeds.

Were Jesus’ disciples like them at this point in Matthew’s gospel? The pharisees were bent on putting Jesus to death. They’ re joined by the Herodians, the followers of Herod, ruler in Galilee. The cities that first received Jesus with joy now are rejecting him now. His own family wish him to abandon his mission.

His disciples envisioned a wheat field; now they see a world of weeds. And so they ask Jesus:  what’s this is all about? 

Not just Jesus’ immediate disciples wonder about what they’re seeing, others do as well. We celebrate the Feast of the Apostle James July 25th. , Matthew described the mother of James and John appealing to Jesus for a privileged place in his kingdom. She saw a wheat field on the horizon. Jesus reminded her and her sons it’s a field of weeds as well.

Perhaps Matthew’s gospel also has the Galilean world of his day in mind, where the disciples of Jesus become overwhelmed by a resurgent Judaism led by the pharisees? Let’s go further; as we see today a church in decline in the west and a world split into factions, do we have a similar vision of things? We live in a field of weeds!

Parables raise questions and give answers. The parable of the weeds and the wheat proclaims, first of all, God’s confidence in the seed he has sown. Our world will never be a perfect wheat field, but it won’t become a field of weeds. We can’t eradicate every evil we see. As Jesus teaches today: we have to leave this world to the judgment of God.

The parable calls into question the way we look at life. Just weeds? No wheat? Or do we see both. Do we trust in the Sower who has sown wheat? 

As we read this parable, the Lord comes to us as wheat. Ignatius of Antioch once said “I am God’s wheat.” And so are we.

The Martyrs of Daimiel

1 Reply
Damiel

Civil wars are hard to understand. The American Civil War, the war in Rwanda in the 1990s, the war in Bosnia. That’s true also of the Spanish Civil War, which took place from 1936-1939 between forces of the left and the right. Great numbers of innocent people lost their lives. Outsiders from Germany, Russia and Italy made the war a testing ground for their own war machines. The scars are still there.

Many Catholic clergy were killed, especially in the early months of the war, including 13 bishops, 4,172 diocesan priests and seminarians, 2,364 men religious and 283 nuns in a period referred to as Spain’s “Red Terror.” Today the Passionists remember their Martyrs of Daimiel, Spain.

Between July 22nd and October 24th, 1936, twenty-six religious from the Passionist house of studies, Christ, the Light, outside the city of Daimiel, about eighty miles south of Madrid, died at the hands of anti-religious militiamen at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War

They were: Niceforo Diez Tejerina, 43, provincial superior, who previously served as a missionary in Mexico and Cuba after being ordained in Chicago, Illinois.; Ildefonso García Nozal, 38; Pedro Largo Redondo, 29; Justiniano Cuestra Redondo, 26; Eufrasio de Celis Santos, 21; Maurilio Macho Rodríguez, 21; Jose EstalayoGarcia, 21; Julio Mediavilla Concejero, 21; Fulgencio Calv Sánchez, 19; Honorino Carraced Ramos, 19; Laurino Proáno Cuestra, 20; Epifanio Sierra Conde, 20; Abilio Ramos Ramos, 19; Anacario Benito Nozal, 30; Felipe Ruiz Fraile, 21; Jose Osés Sainz, 21; Felix Ugalde Irurzun, 21; Jose Maria Ruiz Martinez, 20; Zacarias Fernández Crespo, 19; Pablo Maria Lopez Portillo, 54; Benito Solano Ruiz, 38; Tomas Cuartero Gascón, 21; Jose Maria Cuartero Gascón, 18; German Perez Jiménez, 38; Juan Pedro Bengoa Aranguren, 46; Felipe Valcobado Granado, 62.

Most of those killed were young religious studying for ordination and destined for missionary work in Mexico and Cuba. Others were priests who taught them and brothers who served in the community. Father Niceforo, the provincial, was visiting the community at the time.

Militiamen entered the Passionist house on the night of July 21st and ordered the thirty-one religious to leave in one hour. Father Niceforo gathered them in the chapel, gave them absolution, opened the tabernacle and said:

“We face our Gethsemane. . . all of us are weak and frightened, , ,but Jesus is with us; he is the strength of the weak. In Gethsemane an angel comforted Jesus; now he himself comforts and strengthens us. . .Very soon we will be with him. . .To die for him is really to live. . . Have courage and help me by your example.”

He then distributed the sacramental hosts to them.

The militiamen ordered the group to the cemetery and told them to flee. At the same time, they alerted companions in the surrounding areas to shoot the religious on sight.

The Passionists split into five groups. The first group of nine was captured and shot outside the train station of Carabanchel in Madrid on July 22, 1936 at 11pm.

The second group of twelve, Father Niceforo among them, was taken at the station at Manzanares and shot by a firing squad. Father Niceforo and four others died immediately. Seven were taken to a hospital where one later died. Six of them recovered, only to be shot to death later on October 23, 1936

Three other religious, traveling together, were executed at the train station of Urda (Toledo) on July 25th. Two gave their lives at Carrion de Calatrave on September 25th. Only five of the thirty-one religious were spared.

Numerous eye-witnesses testified afterwards to the brave faith and courage shown by the Daimiel Community in their final moments, especially the signs of forgiveness they gave their executioners.

They were beatified by Pope John Paul II on October 1, 1989, who said of them: “None of the religious of the community of Daimiel was involved in political matters. Nonetheless, within the climate of the historical period in which they lived, they were arrested because of the tempest of religious persecution, generously shedding their blood, faithful to their religious way of life, and emulating, in the twentieth century, the heroism of the Church’s first martyrs.” (Homily: October 1, 1989)

Today their bodies are interred in the Passionist house at Daimiel, Spain.

Their feastday is July  24th.

Praying with Mary and Ann

4 Replies
IMG (554)
Western Wall, Jerusalem

A novena preparing for the  Feast of Saints Ann and Joachim, the parents of Mary, the mother of Jesus, July 26 began on July 17, reminding us of the role parents and grandparents play in raising children.  Some years ago I visited the ancient temple ruins in Jerusalem where  Jewish women were fervently praying with their daughters before the temple’s western wall.

Ann and her daughter Mary must have prayed here too.

Temple

The picture above, at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, is a model of the temple from Jesus’ time. Tradition says Ann and Joachim, parents of Mary, were closely associated with the temple and may have lived nearby.  An ancient church honoring St. Ann stands today near the Pool of Bethesda, near the temple. There, a paralyzed man was healed by Jesus. (John 5, 1-18) That’s the church in the ruins below.

st.ann basilica
Church of St. Ann, Jerusalem

A statue of Ann and her daughter Mary is in the Jerusalem church. Ann is teaching her daughter at her side.

IMG_0600

What is she teaching her? Some statues show her teaching Mary the scriptures, but I’ve seen a statue, like the one below, showing Ann teaching her the ABCs and numbers. That’s what parents and grandparents do, isn’t it? They teach children life’s basics: how to live and how to pray.

IMG_0865
Cathedral, Tegucigalpa, Honduras

Still true today. We put the little statue below of the two of them under our chapel altar for the novena. Parents and grandparents, the next generation is at your side. Ann and Joachim pray for us; show us the way.

St. Bridget of Sweden: July 23

2 Replies

St. Bridget of Sweden, whose feast is July 23rd, was a 14th century mystic who challenged the powerful of her day, first the court of Sweden and later the papacy. She influenced Christian spirituality and art.

Born into a powerful Swedish family with ties to the royal court. Bridget married Ulf Gudmarrson when she was 14. They had 8 children, one of whom is also honored as a saint, Catherine of Sweden. Bridget was known for the care she took of the sick around her. In visiting the sick she took her children, to teach them this work of mercy.

As a child of 10 Bridget was attracted to the mystery of the Passion of Jesus and that mystery inspired her prayer and spirituality ever afterwards. This mystery made her fearless in challenging injustice when she saw it. Bridget protested the wanton living of Swedish royalty and its uncaring attitude towards the poor. After her husband’s death in 1334 she founded a religious community, continuing to speak out fearlessly against the lifestyle and privileges of the powerful.

In 1350 Bridget went to Rome to gain approval for her Order of the Most Holy Savior, the Brigittines. There she confronted the papacy. The pope , fearing the turmoil in the Papal States, had fled to in Avignon in France. Bridget urged him to return to Rome. The pope was a shepherd, she said; he should be with his sheep, especially in times of turmoil.

Bridget’s prayers and revelations, widely circulated in her time, were reminders of what Jesus said and did, especially the example he gave in his Passion. She inspired people to meditate on the mysteries of Christ for their wisdom.

She inspired artists in their portrayals of the mysteries of Christ. In one of her visions she saw Mary and Joseph adoring the Child lying on the ground. Incarnate, he made the earth his home. Previously in art, Mary was portrayed at the crib, lying down after giving birth. In Bridget’s portrayal she joins Joseph, the shepherds (humanity) and the earth itself adoring the Word made flesh.

Jesus birth
Adoration of the Child, Giorgione, 1507, National Gallery, Washington

Bridget also inspired the portrayal of Mary holding the body of Jesus after his crucifixion and the devotion of the Pieta. Cradling him in her arms,, she recalls holding him at his birth in Bethlehem, Bridget said.

Rhine Valley, 14th century

In 1371, Bridget and some of her family went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land; her vivid accounts from there further stimulated the religious imagination of her contemporaries. On July 23, 1373 she died in Rome. Bridget is a patron of Sweden and of Europe.

The church always needs strong women like Bridget, firm in faith and unafraid to speak out. Society too needs women like her in politics and business to steer its course into the future.

Our church today seems to be alive with visionaries, people who claim God has revealed something to them. Bridget was always aware of the possibility that her visions could come from another source rather than God. She prayed to be saved from delusions and pride. This 15th century Swedish painting depicts Satan trying to influence her, but is hit over the head by an angel.

Prayer of St. Bridget

Jesus, true and fruitful Vine! Remember the abundant outpouring of blood shed from your sacred body as juice from grapes in a wine press.    From your side, pierced with a lance by a soldier, blood and water poured out until not a single drop was left in your body.

Through your bitter Passion and your precious blood poured out, receive my soul when I come to die. Amen.

O good Jesus! Pierce my heart so that my tears of penance and love will be my bread day and night; may I be converted entirely to you, may my heart be your home, may my conversation please you, may I merit heaven at the end of my life and be with you and your saints, to praise you forever. Amen

St. Mary Magdalene: July 22

2 Replies
Mary Magdalene, Fra Angelico

In 2016, Pope Francis raised the liturgical celebration of Mary Magdalene, July 22, from a memorial to a feast and directed she be referred to as an “Apostle to the apostles”. Today, the pope said, we must recognize more fully the dignity of women and their role in bringing the gospel to the world. Mary Magdalene is an example.

Gregory the Great, an early pope, got it wrong when he identified Mary Magdalene with Mary, the sister of Lazarus and the sinful women in Luke 7: 33ff, who washed Jesus’ feet. She is neither one. She was a star witness at his resurrection. Unfortunately, Gregory’s picture of Mary influenced the way western Christianity saw Mary. The eastern Christian churches, for the most part, have not seen her that way.

The composite view of Mary Magdalene in the western church could be found until recently in the Tridentine mass texts for her feast. The collect identified her as Mary of Bethany and the gospel was the story from Luke of the penitent woman anointing Jesus’ feet. That picture of her is often found in western Christian art.

Instead of the gospel of the sinful woman, our present lectionary offers John’s account of the appearance of Jesus to Mary after his resurrection. (John 20:1-18) 

Unfortunately some recently, using flimsy evidence from 3rd and 4th century gnostic writings, want to “de-mythologize” Jesus and romanticize his relationship with Mary. Some even claim he was married to her. Their claims have been sensationalized in the  media and unfortunately get a wide hearing.

Better to listen to the four gospels, especially St. Luke’s Gospel, and the evidence of the New Testament. They see Mary as a disciple among other important woman followers of Jesus who loved him. Their witness is older and more reliable. There’s also new archeological evidence about Magdala, Mary’s hometown, that helps us understand Mary Magdalene. Take a look.

Yet,  Gregory the Great’s description of Mary’s spirituality is right on. Here’s an excerpt from his beautiful sermon in today’s Liturgy of the Hours:

“We should reflect on Mary’s attitude and the great love she felt for Christ; for though the disciples had left the tomb, she remained. She was still seeking the one she had not found, and while she sought she wept; burning with the fire of love, she longed for him who she thought had been taken away. And so it happened that the woman who stayed behind to seek Christ was the only one to see him. For perseverance is essential to any good deed, as the voice of truth tells us: Whoever perseveres to the end will be saved.

“At first she sought but did not find, but when she persevered it happened that she found what she was looking for. When our desires are not satisfied, they grow stronger, and becoming stronger they take hold of their object. Holy desires likewise grow with anticipation, and if they do not grow they are not really desires. Anyone who succeeds in attaining the truth has burned with such a great love. As David says: My soul has thirsted for the living God; when shall I come and appear before the face of God? And so also in the Song of Songs the Church says: I was wounded by love; and again: My soul is melted with love.

“Woman, why are you weeping? Whom do you seek? She is asked why she is sorrowing so that her desire might be strengthened; for when she mentions whom she is seeking, her love is kindled all the more ardently.

“Jesus says to her: Mary. Jesus is not recognized when he calls her “woman”; so he calls her by name, as though he were saying: Recognize me as I recognize you; for I do not know you as I know others; I know you as yourself. And so Mary, once addressed by name, recognizes who is speaking. She immediately calls him rabboni, that is to say, teacher, because the one whom she sought outwardly was the one who inwardly taught her to keep on searching.”

Here’s Pope Francis on Jesus’ words to Mary in the garden, “Do not cling to me.”

“It is specifically in the garden of the resurrection that the Lord says to Mary Magdalene: “Do not hold on to me”. This is an invitation directed not only to Mary, but also to the entire Church, to enter into an experience of faith that surpasses any materialistic appropriation or human understanding of the divine mystery. A disciple of Jesus is not to seek human securities and worldly titles, but faith in the Living and Risen Christ! “

The article on Mary Magdalene in Wikipedia deals extensively, and generally fairly, with the interpretations of Mary in religious and popular culture through history. She is an importance reference for recognizing women’s role in the world and in the church today. An importance saint to know.

MATTHEW 12:47-50: the Family of Jesus

Leave a reply

Our readings from St. Matthew this week deal with the growing opposition to Jesus as he preaches and performs miracles in Galilee. IT foreshadows his final rejection in Jerusalem. Concluding this section, Matthew adds another source of opposition to Jesus that may surprise us. His own family from Nazareth seems to oppose him.

“While he was still speaking to the crowds, his mother and his brothers appeared outside, wishing to speak with him. [Someone told him, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, asking to speak with you.”]*But he said in reply to the one who told him, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?” And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is my brother, and sister, and mother.” (Matthew 12,47-50)

A little about family life at the time of Jesus may help us appreciate this gospel. For one thing, in Jesus’ day nuclear families– a mother, father and children living alone– were not the norm. In Jesus day families were extended families or clans, living and working together.

And so, the picture we sometimes have of the Holy Family– Mary, Joseph and the Child Jesus all by themselves in a small house in Nazareth– is not a realistic picture. Families in Nazareth, as we know from excavations in towns like Capernaum, lived in compounds, as they often do today in the Middle East, working together in the fields or in a business and offering each other support.

There were obligations to your extended family or clan. Everyone had to help in the harvest; you were expected to promote your family’s interest. The mother of James and John approaching Jesus looking for a good place for her sons in his kingdom was only doing what she was expected to do.

What we see in this gospel is the extended family of Jesus descending on him as he speaks to the crowds to remind him of his family obligations. What did they want to remind him of, we wonder? Were they off to a wedding or a funeral of a relative and were telling him to come along? Or, was the wheat harvest ready at Nazareth and they came looking for help? Or, they just wanted him for themselves for awhile? From Mark’s gospel we know some thought he was out of his mind.

Whatever it was, Jesus said that his family was those before him h meant to be with them.  “ I belong here now,” Jesus seems to be saying to them. The kingdom of God, God’s family, God’s purpose, is greater than his family’s interests.

Today, of course, individualism is our predominant value, and it often stands in the way of family interests. It’s what “I” want that counts. But even today, family interests, family pressure can be strong and can get in the way of what God wants. Sometimes those closest to us, our own family, can be hard to manage, even though they want the best for us.

Jesus experienced that too.

The Sign of Jonah

Leave a reply

Some of the scribes and Pharisees said to Jesus,
“Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.”
He said to them in reply,
“An evil and unfaithful generation seeks a sign,
but no sign will be given it
except the sign of Jonah the prophet.
Just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights, 
so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth
three days and three nights.
At the judgment, the men of Nineveh will arise with this generation
and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah;
and there is something greater than Jonah here.
At the judgment the queen of the south will arise with this generation
and condemn it, because she came from the ends of the earth
to hear the wisdom of Solomon;
and there is something greater than Solomon here.” (Matthew 12:38-42)

The story of Jonah, our reading today, often appears over the remains of someone deceased in the Christian catacombs of early Rome. The whole story is usually there, from Jonah getting thrown off the boat, to being swallowed up by the whale, to Jonah sitting in the shade of the vine. Why?

The early Christians recognized the wisdom in the stories of the Jewish scriptures much more than we do today, I think. They must have seen themselves and their loved ones who passed on as “the men of Nineveh”, people of the great city of Rome, who heard the preaching of Jesus and believed. 

He had the power to bring them life. They believed in the mystery of the One who was three days and three nights in the earth and rose again.

Jonah, the prophet, was their patron saint. 

16th Week of the Year: Readings and Feasts

Leave a reply

Chapters 12-13 of Mathew’s gospel continue to describe the opposition Jesus faces from the from the scribes and Pharisees . (Monday) The towns and cities that once welcomed him begin also to wonder about him. His family from Nazareth come to speak to him, most likely to take him home. (Tuesday)

Jesus responds to the opposition with a series of parables, beginning with the parable of the sower. (Friday)

We’re continuing to read from the Prophet Micah this week. A contemporary of Isaiah, he is not a priest, but may be one of the immigrants from the Northern Kingdom who tried to resettle in Judea. Micah champions the cause of immigrants and promises that God will be merciful to the Jews of the north. (Monday-Tuesday)

On Thursday we begin reading from the Prophet Jeremiah. Born about 650 into a priestly family, Jeremiah preached  to the Kingdom of Judah during its final tumultuous days before the Babylonians captured Jerusalem in 598 BC and took away its leading citizens into exile in Babylon.

Jeremiah wasn’t accepted during his lifetime and\ suffered for his preaching. His influence grew only after his death as Jewish exiles reflected on his words and actions. He’s seen as a figure of Jesus who also suffered rejection.

We celebrate the feast of Mary Magdalen this week. (Wednesday) Her feast, as “an apostle to the apostles” was raised in importance by Pope Francis from a memorial to a feast. We celebrate the Apostle James, one of the “sons of Zebedee” on Saturday, 

The Prophet Micah

1 Reply
Micah. James Tissot

We’re reading in our lectionary from the prophet Micah, a contemporary of Isaiah.Unlike Isaiah, , he was not from the priestly caste, but was an ordinary Jew. Micah lived in the southern kingdom of Judea in the 8th century when Assyrian armies destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel and began deporting many of its people to Assyria. 

Archeologists and historians think a good number of people from the northern kingdom immigrated south to Judea at this time and eventually they contributed to its growth. But first, they needed land and houses to live in. Was Micah one of the immigrants? Micah warns Judea’s wealthy class against treating the new immigrants badly. 

Woe to those who plan iniquity…
They covet fields, and seize them;
houses, and they take them;
They cheat an owner of his house,
a man of his inheritance. (Micah 2, 1-6)

The same people whom God led out of Egypt and gave land to freely are gouging the poor immigrants:

O my people, what have I done to you,
or how have I wearied you? Answer me!
For I brought you up from the land of Egypt,
from the place of slavery I released you;

Prophets like Micah called for social justice. They raised up issues that don’t go out of date. We need prophetic voices to raise them up today in a society increasingly anti-immigrant. Housing, immigration, unfair real estate practices?

You have been told what’s good, what the LORD requires of you: Only do justice and love goodness and walk humbly with your God.  (Micah 8:8)

“But you, Bethlehem-Ephrathah,least among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient times.”Micah 5: 1-2. Matthew’s Gospel (2: 5-6) reports that the chief priests and scribes cite this passage from Micah as a promise that a messiah in the line of David will be born in Bethlehem.

Micah 5:1-4 is also the first reading for the Feast of the Birth of Mary, September 8, and one of the readings for the common of feasts of Mary.