Let the Good Grow in Your Life

(Matthew 13:24-43)

Jesus had no power-point presentations in his day, but he used plenty of images from the world in which he lived.  We see this in abundance in this Sunday’s Gospel.  He asks his listeners, not just simply to listen with their ears, but also with their eyes.  He asks them to look around at life and to see, in the ordinary things of life, hints of what he is offering to those who come into his company.  We can throw these things aside and say he is talking rubbish or we can sit with the images, try to picture what Jesus is describing and ask ourselves how this image speaks to me. Jesus speaks to us in stories and images, because he wants us to be part of what he is saying.  He is offering us the Word of Life, but life needs to be lived and experienced.

The story at the centre of this Sunday’s Gospel is one that is very alive for us in the Church of today. How is it that there could be “bad priests” in the midst of “good priests”?  How is it that the Church can have so much evil in the midst of so much good?  These are real questions each one of us has had to face personally over the last few years.  But we are not to be surprised. Jesus is telling us in today’s Gospel that we should always expect things to be like this, because this is the story of the world.  God did not destroy the world after Adam and Eve had sinned, he never destroys, he comes to redeem. History will always be a story of good and evil interacting. This is true in our own personal lives, in the life of society and indeed in the life of the Church herself. All we know for certain is that in the end good will triumph.  But until then we have to continue to trust in God and allow the grace of God in our lives to grow and thus become part of the triumph of good over evil.  We build up the Church by the holiness of our lives and we damage it by the sin in our lives.

Jesus’ stories are real, they are not just old-wives tales; they tell us about life and about ourselves.  Sit this week and picture each of the scenes in this Sunday’s Gospel and let the Word of God become alive in your life.

Fr. John Harris OP.