SIXTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME, YEAR A
23rd July 2023
Wisdom 12:13,16-19; Romans 8:26-27; Matthew 13:24-43.
Of the three parables of today’s gospel passage, let us focus on the parable of the wheat and darnel. This parable has something to teach us about the coexistence of good and evil with regards to our struggle with addictions to sin. According to the parable, the owner of the field told the servants to let the wheat and the darnel grow till the harvest, because when you weed out the darnel you might pull up the wheat with it. Biblical scholars have it that in their early stages, the darnel so closely resembled the wheat that it is impossible to distinguish the one from the other. When both had produced seed heads it was easy to distinguish them, but by that time their roots were so intertwined that the darnel could not be weeded out without tearing the wheat out with them. The darnel is a parasite that can only be masterminded by an enemy. This demonstrates the classification of evil as parasite.
The lesson from this parable will benefit our struggle with addictions to sin. Our hope is in the wisdom that evil is a parasite to good and that care should be applied in the effort to separate one from the other. We should not be hard on ourselves in our struggle with addiction to sin in order to avoid self-harm. Addiction mingle with our life to the extent that it tries to define us. The owner of the field allowed both wheat and darnel to grow till harvest which is the appropriate time for a successful separation. Likewise, we must take time to understudy our addictions in order to discover the best approach to solution. Our addictions to sin should never define us because evil is a parasite.
Fr Anthony Ekpunobi, CM.
