WHILE MEN SLEPT

 A MESSAGE FOR THE 24TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Our Lord’s parable in today’s Gospel compares our world to a field in which good seed was sown.  And it is true that there is still so much good in our world, so many God-fearing men and women still intent on pleasing God and doing everything they can to advance his kingdom in the world around them.  Unfortunately, though, many of these good people have not been sufficiently vigilant, and have allowed the enemy to enter in:  “While men slept, his enemy came and sowed cockle among the wheat.”

Today, wherever we turn, we are horrified by the extent to which this cockle has grown amongst us.  Evil surrounds us on every side, and we all suffer to some extent or other because of it.  It seems that no institution, whether religious or secular, has been spared the infestation of this evil, and, more and more, we feel that we are being faced with an enemy of immense proportions, seemingly unstoppable in its thirst for power and control over our lives.

And so we speak to our Creator, complaining to him that despite our best efforts we are surrounded by forces trying to destroy us.  Many of us are tempted in these circumstances to become activists for freedom.  We campaign against the divisive agendas of the school boards, of the medical and pharmaceutical conglomerate, the bogus claims of climate change, abortion, transgenderism and transhumanism with which are world has become so polluted.  Why, you might ask, do I use the word “tempted”?  Is it wrong to actively oppose these evils?  No, of course, not, and the good folks who spend their time and energy fighting the good fight are to be congratulated.  And yet, there is a danger…

We know that “an enemy hath done this,” and so we do the natural thing and resist.  We ask God to destroy the persecutors of his Church and the Nation.  We say to him: “Wilt thou then that we go and gather up all this evil cockle amongst us, and destroy it?”  And the Lord’s answer is interesting and not the immediate resolution we impatient human beings seek: “Nay, lest while ye gather up the cockle, ye root up also the wheat with it.”  If we become too zealous in our hatred for evil, we can end up endangering the good people along with the bad ones, and even our own soul.  So many times in the course of human history have men reacted to evil by resorting to violence and hatred themselves.  Hatred, not of the evil itself, but of the men who promote it and force it upon the rest of us.  This has never worked and simply makes bad people out of good ones.  Think of the medieval tortures employed to prevent witchcraft and heresy, the sadistic vengeance showered upon real and sometimes exaggerated evils.

“Vengeance is mine,” saith the Lord.  And there will be justice for the cockle amongst us, as well as for the enemy who sowed it among the good seed in the first place.  Meanwhile, our Lord tells us, “Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the cockle, and bind it in bundles to burn it: but gather the wheat into my barn.”   The meaning is clear, and our task, as always, remains to continue to grow from good seed into wheat, and leave the handling of the cockle to God.