Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Riddles produce wisdom. Wisdom perceives mysteries. Mysteries proclaim the greatest paradox. God brings good out of evil (Rom 8: 28). All events are under God’s providence. Planned since the foundation of the world (Ps 78:2; Matt 13:35), God’s providence has one sole purpose: our salvation. As Ezekiel tells us,
I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways (Eze 33:11; see also 2 Pet 3:9;).
His plan inspires us to be sensible, sober, serious who are steadfast seeking what is good, true, and beautiful, not in our eyes, but His eyes (Titus 2:11). Since everything works for the God’s good, we see every opportunity and test through God’s eyes not our own.
Human eyes, sadly, easily misinterpret God’s providence. As a two-sided coin, both images inspire creating expectations. On the one side, expectations lead to wisdom and understanding; the other leads to foolishness and misunderstanding. Having freewill, our eyes sift through our expectations deciding which are false and which are true. Deciphering God’s expectations needs proper discernment of Spirits, as St. Paul tells us
If we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we preached to you, let him be accursed (Ga 1:8).
Expectations, of the Gospel or not, need honest discernment. Discernment tests the spirit to see if it leads to truth or lies, good, or evil, beauty or ugliness. St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, explained clearly the correct direction discernment takes.
“We should not prefer health to sickness, riches to poverty, honor to dishonor, a long life to a short life. . . . Our one desire and choice should be what is more conducive to the end for which we are created” (St. Ignatius, Spiritual Exercises).
Divinely illuminated, loosing ourselves into God’s providence, we surrender our liberty, memory, understanding, and entire will along with all that I own and all that was given to me. Job summed up perfectly divine expectations: “Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?” (Job 2:10). Or, God giveth, God taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord.
Oddly, suffering: physical, emotional, relational, and spiritual, makes us discern. We have to choose. Either we adhere faithfully and fully to God’s will, or we abandon God’s plan and create our own way. Suffering, if seen through the eyes of faith, is the only gift we can truly give to God because it is our own. We own ourselves; we own our sufferings. Since we have free will, the divine expectation wants us to suffer because of our love. Choosing to unite our wills to God despite the suffering, purifies and then perfects our love. Perfect love, as St. Paul tells us, endures and hopes all things, overcoming obstacles that attempt to destroy love.
Lucifer, however, uses our expectations to divide, dissent, and sadly destroy our ability to discern. He deceives us, giving us false expectations, especially when we suffer.
In our minds, injustice wants correction. Wrongs need to be made right. Evil needs to be punished. Yet, Jesus, in his parables, uses riddles revealing how deceptive our human way of thinking is. Jesus reasons differently. Injustices make us choose to be just. Dealing with wrongs make us seek righteousness all the more. Evil and the abhorrent consequences drives us to goodness. God’s providence challenges the false expectations Lucifer implants in our minds, inverting them as the very means to create true expectations. In other words, God’s expectations are deceptive as He uses the very wrongs and evils as the means to produce right and good. He takes what is evil and wrong in our lives and uses them to correct, heal, and sanctify us. This is divine wisdom as the Book of Wisdom reveals.
Those deserving of death, (You) granting them time and opportunity to give up their wickedness (Wis 12:20).
God wants our salvation, not our condemnation. He gives us chance after chance to change, so that we may convert and live.
The parables, especially those in Matthews Gospel which are unique to him, address the deceptive expectations we have. The parables invert our human expectations inspiring a divine interpretation. Today’s Gospel addresses three unique parables, riddles, that straighten our twisted expectations.
The parable of the Wheat and Tares reveals how similar expectations can be. Tares, a grass that resembles wheat almost exactly, can only be identified when it is blossoming. When it matures, it clearly is not wheat but chaff.
The vindictiveness revealed in this parable teaches us how evil grows within our heart along with goodness. At times, they are very hard to distinguish. God allows evil to mature along with the good. This is deceptive. But instead of destroying both the good and the bad, Jesus allows both to mature.
The divine expectation anticipates the good to create a love filled with such joy and happiness that will choke the evil. The good matures within strengthening us to withstand any evil knowing we have supernatural strength to overcome anything, even death.
In the Parable of the Mustard Seed, the kingdom of God confronts the Israelite expectation of God’s power, majesty, and glory. For the Israelites, the kingdom of God, as Ezekiel tells us, grows and becomes like a Lebanon Cedar, a towering tree, majestic and royal. King Solomon built his Temple, a wonder to behold, with this wood (Ps 92:12). Another image of Israel compares the kingdom of God to a vineyard full of fruitful vines (Is 5:7). Throughout the the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament, the Kingdom of God is beautiful, glorious, powerful, and holy. Yet, Jesus begins his parable, “the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed.” The kingdom of God is a bramble bush, gnarly and thorny. It invades like a noxious plant becoming a nuisance for those who want to grow crops. The contrast is clear. The human expectation wants a glorious kingdom, but Jesus compares it to a weed. Yet, this plant is tenacious and cannot be rooted out. It spreads like wildfire and consumes everything. The Divine Expectation gives insight into God’s ways. The Word of God, appears to be small, insignificant, and belittled, yet, it perseveres, endures in good times and bad. It stays strong in flood and drought. It overcomes and ultimately, her beauty is unveiled, not in this world, but in heaven.
Finally, the leaven in the bread concludes the set. Leaven, something today we appreciate, yet for the Israelites leaven is considered unclean. It eats the wheat making it rise becoming fluffy rather than healthy. Leaven bread rots and becomes moldy. Yet, leaven doubles and triples wheat stretching it to feed 1000s rather than 100s. So too, Jesus uses bread as the foundation for the most intense and important teaching as it pertains to the Eucharist.
Taking five loaves, Jesus feeds five thousand. Taking a bit of leaven, five loaves, Jesus feeds not only five thousand but feeds every soul every day telling us this bread is my body. This wine is my blood. The human expectation cannot fathom such a comparison, but the Divine Expectation tells us differently.
The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? (1 Co 10:16).
Jesus deceives us. The bread is Me. The wine is Me. How? He tells us what our senses cannot fathom. Yet, He expects us to believe that this little host, almost nothing is God’s real presence upon earth. That this wine is his blood—life—which is poured out daily for you. Only through the eyes of faith can we with St. Thomas Aquinas pray:
Faith will tell us Christ is present,
When our human senses fail
(St. Thomas Aquinas, Tantum ergo).
The purpose and plan of divine providence mystifies us, for it deceives our expectations. Wisdom, a gift of the Holy Spirit, empowers us to interpret these deceptions according to God’s providence. Without wisdom, God’s providence easily deceives us, especially if we fail in faith. Through faith, however, we see clearly the wisdom of God’s providence revealed through the parable. He clarifies our expectations. If the parables penetrate allowing us to discern accurately, clarity exposes our false expectations. Clarity also penetrates empowering us to discern clearly, God’s ways are different, but God’s ways are the antidote to the false expectations, created by the Father of Lies. They are the truths that set us free. They reveal God’s goodness that makes us good. They are beauty which makes us whole.