Our Gospel yesterday was the Parable of The Wheat and Tares. The sermon yesterday calls us to contemplate the truth that good and evil are both being planted and growing in the world till the end-time harvest. The planting of seeds of good and seeds of evil has been taking place since Eden. The beautiful garden planted by God quickly had the seed of the Evil One planted within it.
The truth of the parable calls us to think about our own lives. Good and evil are planted within us as well. God is working to make the garden of our heart a fruitful and beautiful reflection of his love and goodness. Yet, even though God's grace and life has been planted within us when we received the Seed of the Woman, Jesus Christ, into our hearts by faith, why do we still allow evil to be planted within us?
Why do we, like Adam, allow the Evil One to enter the garden? Why do we allow temptations and sin to be planted in us? Why do we sow tares into the wheat? Lead us not into temptation, and deliver us from evil. Amen.
MEDITATION
Why is God silent? Why does he withdraw? Why is it that just the opposite of what I wanted is happening? This distance between what Jesus promised and what we experience in our own lives makes you think, every time - it has that effect in each generation, for each single person, and even for me.
Each one of us has to struggle to work out an answer for himself, so that in the end he comes to understand why God has spoken to him precisely like that. Augustine and other great Christians say that God gives us what is best for us - even when we do not recognize this at first.
Often, we think that exactly the opposite of what he does would really be best for us. We have to learn to accept this path, which, on the basis of our experience and our suffering, is difficult for us, and to see it as the way in which God is guiding us. God's way is often a path that enormously reshapes and remolds our life, a path in which we are truly changed and straightened out.
To that extent, we have to say that this "Ask, and you will receive" certainly cannot mean that I can call God in as a handyman who will make my life easy ever time I want something. Or who will take away suffering and questioning. On the contrary, it means that God definitely hears me and what he grants me is, in the way known only to him, what is right for me. --God And The World, Pope Benedict XVI
My prayers are with you this week. Each hour of prayer at the Abbey this week will be a calling upon God help us drive away the Evil One from the garden of our hearts.
Fr. Kevin
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