Year A 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time

[SPEAKER_01]: A reading from the Book of Wisdom, there is no God other than you, who cares for everything, to whom you might have to prove that you never judged unjustly.

[SPEAKER_01]: Your justice has its essence, strength, your sovereignty over all makes you lenient to all.

[SPEAKER_01]: You show your strength when your sovereign power is questioned and you expose the insolence of those who know it.

[SPEAKER_01]: But, disposing of such strength you are a mild and judgment.

[SPEAKER_01]: You govern us with great lenience.

[SPEAKER_01]: For you have only to will and your power is there.

[SPEAKER_01]: By acting thus you have total lesson to your people, how the virtuous man must be kindly to his fellow men.

[SPEAKER_01]: And you have given your sons a good hope that, often sin, you will grant repentance.

[SPEAKER_01]: The response or your song is, Lord, you are good and forgiving.

[SPEAKER_01]: O Lord, you are good and forgiving, full of love to all who call, give heed, or Lord, to my prayer and attend to the sound of my voice.

[SPEAKER_01]: Lord, you are good and forgiving.

[SPEAKER_01]: All the nations shall come to adore you and glorify your name, O Lord, for you are great and do marvelous deeds, for you who alone are God.

[SPEAKER_01]: Lord, you are good and forgiving.

[SPEAKER_01]: but you go out of mercy and compassion, soil to anger or load, abounding in love and truth, turn and take pity on me.

[SPEAKER_01]: Lord, you're good and forgiving.

[SPEAKER_01]: A reading from the letter of St. Paul to the Romans.

[SPEAKER_01]: The Spirit comes to help us in our weaknesses.

[SPEAKER_01]: For when we cannot choose words in order to pray properly, the Spirit Himself expresses our plea in a way that could never be put into words.

[SPEAKER_01]: and God who knows everything in our hearts knows perfectly well what he means and that the pleas of the saints expressed by the Spirit according to the mind of God.

[SPEAKER_01]: The word of the Lord

[SPEAKER_00]: a reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus put a parable before the crowds.

[SPEAKER_00]: The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field.

[SPEAKER_00]: While everybody was asleep, his enemy came, so donal, all among the wheat and made off.

[SPEAKER_00]: When the new wheat sprouted and ripened, the donal appeared as well.

[SPEAKER_00]: The only servants went to him and said, Sir, was it not good to see that you sowed in your field?

[SPEAKER_00]: If so, where does this Donald come from?

[SPEAKER_00]: Some enemy has done this, he answered.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the servant said, Do you want us to go and weed it out?

[SPEAKER_00]: but he said, no, because when you weed out the Donald, you might pull up the wheat with it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let then both grow to the harvest and at harvest time I shall say to the reapers first collect the Donald and tighten to bundles to be burned.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then gather the wheat into my barn.

[SPEAKER_00]: He put another parable before them.

[SPEAKER_00]: The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is the smallest of all seeds, but when he is disgrown, it is the biggest shrub of all, and becomes a tree so that the birds of air come and shelter in its branches.

[SPEAKER_00]: He told them another parable.

[SPEAKER_00]: The kingdom of heaven is like the yeast, a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour till it was livened all through.

[SPEAKER_00]: In all this Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables, indeed he would never speak to them except in parables.

[SPEAKER_00]: This was too full of prophecy, I will speak to you in parables and expound things hidden since the foundations of the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then, leaving the crowds he went to the house, and his disciples came to him and said, explain the parable about the Donald in the field to us.

[SPEAKER_00]: He said in reply, the soul of the good seed is the son of man.

[SPEAKER_00]: The field is the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: The good seed is the subjects of the kingdom.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Donald, the subjects of the evil one.

[SPEAKER_00]: The enemy who sowed them, the devil.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well then, just as the Donalds gathered up and burnt in the fire, so it will be at the end of time.

[SPEAKER_00]: The son of man will send his angels and they will gather out of his kingdom all things that provoke offences and all who do evil, and throw them into the blazing furnace where they will be weeping in grinding of teeth.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then the virtuous will shine like a sun in the kingdom of their father.

[SPEAKER_00]: Listen, anyone who has ears.

[SPEAKER_00]: Today we are going to reflect on what it means to be church in the light of the three parables in our gospel.

[SPEAKER_00]: The first parable recounts the experience of a man who turns out to be a landowner with servants.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the servants are scandalised that he's allowing wheat to grow together with the wheat until the harvest.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so this farmer representing God so good seed, but the enemy Satan sneaks in while people are asleep and so is Donald, which is an aggressive weed.

[SPEAKER_00]: and then we see in the gospel the attention shifts back to the learn-owner to see what he will do.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he doesn't respond in the obvious way by pulling up the Donald straight away.

[SPEAKER_00]: He instead gives instruction for patience and tolerance until the final sorting.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this parable is similar in part to that of the previous parable of the soar, which was the theme was carry on your work faithfully in spite of mixed results.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it is encouraging, in this case, not based on the sort of astonishing results that are going to be derived.

[SPEAKER_00]: But on the promise that God will evaluate the results in the judgment, judgment will be done at the end of the day.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now when we look at the next two parables of the gospel, the parable of the mustard seed and the liven of the east, these parables are paid in Matthew and Luke and the one is about a man and the other one about a woman.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the second parable in our gospel today contrast the apparent insignificance of God's work which is

[SPEAKER_00]: the smallest of the seeds, and then its ultimate importance, and it suggests that the kingdom already has a present dimension, and that the kingdom has already begun, and has been started in some way, and it started that process of moving towards its fullness.

[SPEAKER_00]: In a shorter form,

[SPEAKER_00]: Matthew has shifted the point of this parable so that the contrast is no longer between the tiny seed and the large shrub that it becomes, but for Matthew it's between the seed and it's supernatural transformation into a tree.

[SPEAKER_00]: The story then points to the almost unnoticed beginnings of the work of the kingdom in the Ministry of Jesus, and that's contrast with a sort of surprisingly great results that are promised in the fulfillment at the end of time.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, if you think about the global effect of Christianity on the world in the last 2,000 years and across the world as well, a time-end space and all of this just as the result of the actions of an obscure rabbi from a tiny village who was killed by a low-ranking sort of regional politician when he was 33.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus uses the parable to point to the surprising effect that a small movement of people can have on the whole of society.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then in the Jewish tradition, Leaven or Yist often had this

[SPEAKER_00]: And we see it connected with the rituals of the Passover at the Feast of the Unleavened Bread.

[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, you remove the Leaven, you have this Unleavened Bread set up right at the Passover.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's also what Paul, who you will remember was a Jewish Pharisee, also used the image of Leavenal yeast in one Corinthians 5 as a symbol of evil that he's so seeking to pervade the Christian community.

[SPEAKER_00]: Matthew, however, uses it here as a positive image for the power of God and the low key coming of kingdom of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so, it's the sort of small, little start or little beginning of what was to become a massive great church.

[SPEAKER_00]: And as far as it's like that as a motto that was attributed to Mother Teresa goes, don't seek to do great things for God.

[SPEAKER_00]: Seek to do small things with great love.

[SPEAKER_00]: this parable, it gives us a clue also as to the main theme of Matthew's understanding of the church and its destiny.

[SPEAKER_00]: The kingdom of the Son of Man which he mentions is the present church year on earth and it's contrasted with the kingdom of the Father which is the new age from which all evil persons have been removed.

[SPEAKER_00]: So unlike earth in heaven there will be no evil and there will

[SPEAKER_00]: but we mustn't confuse these two kingdoms, because although the kingdom of God, the Father, is given to the Son of Man who is bringing it to earth, it will only reach its fullness at the end of time, in heaven, in other words, in the kingdom of the Father.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the main point of this in the parable is that the present church that we have your on earth is a mixed body of saints and sinners.

[SPEAKER_00]: They can, the church contains both good and bad and it will be so until the final judgment.

[SPEAKER_00]: and the task of differentiating worthy from unworthy members is not up to us, but it will be accomplished by the Son of Man as Judge on Judgment Day when the evil doers will be punished and will weep a national teeth in English.

[SPEAKER_00]: As the prison church, we are not allowed to try and use it for the divine judgment because that belongs to God alone.

[SPEAKER_00]: We are called to judge, however we are called to judge acts not people.

[SPEAKER_00]: In moral theology we would distinguish between right and wrong which refers to moral acts and we refer to good and bad which refers to the person.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we are called to reform the church and judge and condemn sinful acts, such as abortion or use in Asia or or surrogacy or IVF or all those evils.

[SPEAKER_00]: So whatever we are called to, we need to condemn those sinful acts.

[SPEAKER_00]: But not people.

[SPEAKER_00]: Furthermore, I would just make a comment that it's a theological distortion of Paul who calls us a church of saints to see the true church as something that's hidden or invisible.

[SPEAKER_00]: There is that dimension to the church, but it's not holy.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's no such thing as just the two church being hidden or invisible.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're all part of the church, the visible and the invisible.

[SPEAKER_00]: But we see this characteristic.

[SPEAKER_00]: If not explicit, it is certainly implicit in some puritanical groups, such as, for example, the society of St. Pius the tent that would recently

[SPEAKER_00]: In such groups, try to exclude those who are not pure enough in their theology and they always always look throughout the history of the church, always end up as small, short-lived communities.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'll never forget my lecture in dogmatic theology made a comment once and he said,

[SPEAKER_00]: The excommunication of the Society of St. Pius' attempt was absolutely just a fighting terms of their disobedience, blatant disobedience.

[SPEAKER_00]: With it it was fair and all hypocritical if given the sort of deafening silence with regards to the open defiance of the Holy Sea by the German bishops, that's another issue altogether.

[SPEAKER_00]: But either way, two wrongs don't make a right.

[SPEAKER_00]: To get back to Matthew and his idea of this mixed messy church, his view urges us to prepare for judgment and is also protects us as Christians from being called hypocrites because the church and its members are not going to be perfect.

[SPEAKER_00]: We are saints and sinners as individuals and we are holy and sinful as a church.

[SPEAKER_00]: Again, it does not mean that we was not glued out evil in the church, because we'd left unchecked and choked the wheat, so they must be kept under control.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the individual members freedom to exist according to their conscience is sacrosect, because they've concerns the person.

[SPEAKER_00]: In other words, just because I'm weak or sinful, does not mean I am to be excluded from the community, unless I am promoting a message contrary to the gospel and trying to lead others astray.

[SPEAKER_00]: The church needs constant reformation to grow in holiness, but it must avoid on the other hand unrealistic purism.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we are also in a seeking salvation in the mercy of God, and the parable of the dragonnet that follows this passage, that will be written.

[SPEAKER_00]: in church next week makes the same point that the kingdom is a mixed body and patience is necessary and we must leave the sifting ultimately to God, even if our brothers and sisters at this time in our present church fail to love us.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, giving someone all your love is never an assurance that they will love you back.

[SPEAKER_00]: Don't expect love in return, just wait for it to grow in their heart.

[SPEAKER_00]: But if it doesn't, be content glued in yours.

[SPEAKER_00]: And finally the third parable is a tiny gem of a parable comparing God Almighty to a baker woman and How yeast livens and the way a living such as yeast works is that as a fungus it consumes the sugar in the flower and gives off carbon dioxide Which causes the flower to rise?

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know whether it's a right or not to describe believers as fungi or Fungi, I don't know how you pronounce it, but

[SPEAKER_00]: If we are the fungus consuming God, our tiniest efforts and steps towards holiness allow that carbon dioxide that grace to live in our lives and our lives then live in our community and then our community in their turn livens the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that is our calling as church, amen.