Sharing in God’s Patience - The Catholic Thing

Sharing in God’s Patience - The Catholic Thing Perhaps one of the most difficult teachings of the Church is about herself – that the Church is holy. How can that be? We know her history well enough to know about all kinds of unholiness in the Church. More importantly and most immediately, we know that we ourselves – members of the Church – are beset by sin. Still, in our Creeds we confess that the Church is holy. Today’s parable of the wheat and the tares (Matthew 13:24-43) might shed some light on this doctrine. The parable describes something that happened often enough in the ancient world that there were specific laws against it. A man would sow tares or cockle in his enemy’s wheat field. That weed would grow along with the wheat and would look exactly like it. If not filtered out, it would be harvested with the wheat, make its way into the bread, and poison the consumers, sometimes fatally. As our Lord makes clear, the Church – the children of the kingdom – is the good seed that the Father has sown in the world. Thus, the Church is holy. She is no mere human creation but the foundation and household of God, planted by his hand, established as the Body of Christ. The Church is a tree growing upside down, with her roots in heaven and her branches here on earth. But the Church exists in a fallen world, and the enemy is active. As the parable makes clear, he sows bad seed among the children of the kingdom. There is poison, in effect, even within the Church. The problem is the bad seed looks a lot like the good. So, the householder instructs his servants to wait: Let them grow together until harvest. At that point, he will be able to discern and to judge.