wheat and weeds - 16th Sunday A 2014

Today we read the parable of the wheat and the weeds.  It is a parable which reveals to us our own reality - the reality of our own community, the reality of our own families, the reality of our church even, the reality of our own personal history - that we are wheat and weeds, that life in this world is far from perfect.  The Son of Man sows wheat but the evil one comes at night when everyone is asleep and sows weeds.  Meanwhile while harvest time has not yet arrived, the master prohibits the workers to pull out the weeds for fear that the wheat, the good seed, might be pulled out also and be destroyed in the process.  And so the good and the bad co-exist, the wheat and the weeds grow together, side by side until harvest time.

This is our life isn’t it – may malain, may maayo.  Sa community naton may mga malain man kag may mga maayo man – they grow side by side, they grow together.  Many times tungod sang katuntuhan we would think nga madula na ini ang kaayo niya kay natabunan na sang kalain, daw laban na kalain.  And yet we are convinced that God will fix things, God will one day do something that would make things not just better but the best.

In our first reading today the book of wisdom says that God is lenient, God is kind even to sinners because he wants all of us to come back to him, to repent of our sins.  Kon kada sala mo ginapunish ka ni God, kon kada sala mo kilatan ka ni God, ti paano ka pa magbag-o?  Precisely God is forgiving not because he is tolerant, not because he does not care but because he wants us sinners to go back to him in repentance, he wants us to become better.  Some of us may sometimes misinterpret leniency.  Kis-a kon ginakadlaw-kalawan ko lang dumdum ninyo ok lang sa akon.  Ginasaway ta ka sa hinay agod nga magkambyo ang imo pagginawi.  I am lenient so that you can change, so that you can be given another chance of correcting your faults and rectifying your mistakes,  But do not interpret it as ok, do nto interpret it as a permission to do what you want.

God is lenient because he wants you to repent and change your ways.  And that is what we are going to do also and not abuse the goodness of God.