Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year A
Mystery
Rev. James A. Wickersham

Have you ever noticed how satisfying it is to think you've finally figured something out? Maybe it was at work. Maybe it was raising children. Maybe it was fixing something around the house. You finally think, "I've got it."

Then life humbles you.

I wonder if one of the greatest temptations in the spiritual life is to believe we've got it figured out. We know our faith. We know our prayers. We know what God ought to do. We know who the weeds are.

But the readings today gently remind us that we are not masters of the mystery of salvation. We are servants of it.

St. Paul says something remarkable in the second reading: "We do not know how to pray as we ought." Think about that. If the great St. Paul can say, "We do not know how to pray as we ought," then humility is the beginning of the spiritual life. Even after years of following Christ, we still depend upon the Holy Spirit to teach us how to pray.

That is true of the whole Christian life. If you understood everything about this Mass, you would be the master of it. But none of us is the master of the liturgy. None of us is the master of the sacraments. We are servants of the mystery. That's why we come back every Sunday. We are not a once-and-done people. Every Confession renews the grace of Baptism. Every Eucharist deepens God's life within us. Every time we hear the Scriptures, the Lord has something new to teach us because he is still changing us.

Then we come to the Gospel. The servants see weeds in the field and immediately know what they think should happen. "Do you want us to pull them up?" It seems like a perfectly reasonable question.

But the master says no. Why? Because the servants don't know what the master knows.

The Book of Wisdom tells us that God's strength is shown in mercy. He judges with clemency. He gives people time to repent. That's hard for us because we are often impatient with the sins of other people. We want the weeds dealt with immediately.

What we forget is how patient God has been with us. Think about the Hail Mary. We don't pray, "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for those sinners." We pray, "Pray for us sinners." The Church is constantly reminding us that before we start identifying weeds, we should remember that we are people who depend entirely upon God's mercy.

I came across some old family videos recently that my family has been digitizing. In one of them, my grandmother tells me to do something. I must have been about thirteen years old. Do you know what I did? I looked straight into the camera and rolled my eyes.

I had to laugh because, if I'm honest, I still don't like being told what to do. And I bet you don't either. There is something in all of us that wants to be the master. We see it in families. We see it in the workplace. We see it in parish life. We even see it among nations. We all think we know.

But God doesn't usually work by forcing people. He teaches in parables. He invites. He waits.

His patience is not weakness. It is love.

There is one more thing that struck me while praying with this Gospel. In nature, weeds don't become wheat. But in the kingdom of God, sinners become saints. Saul becomes Paul. Peter, who denied Jesus, becomes the rock upon which Christ builds his Church. That is why God waits. He sees possibilities for conversion that we cannot yet see. He knows the harvest long before we do.

Our job is not to decide who belongs in the barn and who doesn't. Our job is to let the mystery of Christ continue changing us. Every time we come to this altar, we come as people who still have something to learn, still have sins to repent of, and still need God's grace.

We are not here because we have mastered the mystery. We are here because the mystery is still mastering us.