Weeds and Hypocrites
Have you ever heard
someone say, “I don’t go to church because it’s just full of a bunch of
hypocrites”? As a priest, I have to tell you that I hear this over and
over again. Maybe you hear it constantly, too. It is disappointing,
not just because there is some truth to it — that there are Christians who
misrepresent what we believe because of their public sinfulness — but because
the people who say such things close themselves to a relationship with God
(which is bad enough) but also close themselves to fruitful relationships with
others in the Church.
In Matthew 13, Our Lord
continues to preach parables of the kingdom of heaven. In the “Parable of
the Weeds and the Wheat,” Jesus warns His disciples that there will be weeds in
the harvest, that is, those who do evil and cause scandal even in the Church.
God permits them to exist alongside the wheat — the good grain — those who live
faithfully to Christ and His Church. Again, [like last week] the
temptation for us is to automatically justify ourselves. We might think
about all those sinful people out there, or we might look around our parish and
think of those people here who are poor examples of Christians. Due to
our pride or our “being set in our ways,” we can deceive ourselves into
thinking that we are definitely the wheat — the good Christians — and that we
couldn’t possibly be weeds in the Church.
The good news is that we
are the wheat, but there are still crevasses in our lives, that is, areas
exposed to threats from the world, the flesh and the devil. Unless we
tend to these areas, weeds will grow and we will be in danger, not just to ourselves,
but to others in the Church. So, how do we uproot any weeds that might be
springing up? We have to make the sacrament of confession a priority in
our lives. Between my two parishes, I am in the confessional three hours
a week because I believe it is essential to the Christian life. As a
priest, I generally go to confession every 1-2 weeks and go to monthly
spiritual direction. Why? Because if the evil one makes weeds grow
up in my life, then we all suffer. It will give just one more person a
reason to say: “I don’t go to church because the priest is a hypocrite!”
Yes, some hypocrisy exists in my life and in all faithful Catholics’ lives, but
at least we admit it and we are trying with God’s grace to not be
hypocrites. In fact, that’s why we begin Mass with the Penitential Rite (“I
confess to almighty God. . .”), which is a common recognition that we are
in the church because we seek God’s mercy. We expose our weeds to the
fire of God’s love to be more deeply converted and grow in holiness. It
is the way God will take us, make us grow, and help us shine like the sun in
His Kingdom and in His Church.
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