Homily for July 20 - 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Homily for July 20, 2014

Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

The Weeds of the Heart

 

            Have you ever done weeding? For me, it’s one of the most unpleasant tasks. It’s usually backbreaking, bending over in the hot sun to rip out these invasive plants. And heaven forbid if you unknowingly ripped out poison ivy or stinging nettle – you’ll be in agony for hours or days. Not a fun job. But a necessary job. We do it so that the flowerbeds or garden looks better – and so that the good plants have more space to grow. If we let the weeds grow unchecked, the good plants get choked off and they won’t grow as strong.

            This parable about the wheat and the weeds is, as Jesus says, about the world – how there are good people in the world, along with people who do evil deeds, and at the end of time all will be sorted out – the virtuous people to Heaven, the evil people to Hell. But I think there’s another layer here – the fertile ground of the human heart.

            If we’re honest with ourselves, each and every person has both sins and good deeds dwelling in their soul. We both complement other people, and we gossip about them. We pray for others…and we judge them. We offer our praise and worship to God, and we forget to pray to Him on a daily basis. We want the freedom that Jesus offers, and we struggle with addictions to drugs or alcohol or porn. All of us have both wheat and weeds within our heart – both virtues and vices, both sins and good works.

            So it’s time to go weeding. The very first words that Jesus speaks in the Gospel is this: “Repent, the Kingdom of God is at hand.” Repent – we must give up our sins, turn from them to the living God. Today’s first reading is a beautiful meditation about God’s mercy – there is no sin that is unforgiveable if we are willing to turn from it. He wants to heal us, bring us back to Him – and the first step to this is to recognize our sin and ask God for mercy.

            So what is your weed? What is your major weakness, the sin that is most prevalent in our lives? Is it greed? Cursing? Dishonesty? Lust and impurity? Laziness? Gossip? Being grumpy? Choosing things other than God – like sleeping in on Sunday morning instead of making weekly Mass attendance a priority?

            Once we have identified our sins, we turn from them, and we do this by going to Confession and making a resolution to avoid the sin in the future. Our Scriptures tell us that by confessing our sins, we will be forgiven of them.

            We cannot have a relationship with Jesus if we are trapped in serious mortal sin. Sin is like the weeds that crowd out the good plants – the virtues, the good habits, the good works – that are supposed to be a part of our lives. The only thing that can separate us from God is sin, but God’s mercy is stronger than our sins IF we are willing to confess our sins AND be willing to change our lives.

            His mercy is everlasting, and the lives of the saints bear witness to that. I think of one of my favorite saints, whose feast day we celebrated this past week. St. Camillus de Lellis grew up as quite a heathen. His mother was quite elderly when she had him, and when she got pregnant, she prayed about what sort of man he would become. She had a dream of her son as a man, and he was leading a group of other men who were dressed in long black robes with large red crosses on the front of them. The problem was, the only people who dressed like that back in 1500s Italy was condemned criminals. She woke up in great fear – and by the time Camillus was a teenager, he was starting to fulfill that prophetic dream. He had quite a temper, was kicked out of school for fighting, and got involved in drinking. When he was about 16, he ran away from home to join his father in the army – which was basically an excuse to keep drinking and gambling. He became quite addicted to alcohol and to gambling. He would gamble so much that literally he would come home without a shirt, having lost it in the game. Finally, after many years of hard living – drinking, gambling, and womanizing, he had lost so much money that he had to hire himself out in order to make ends meet. He ended up working in construction – for a local Franciscan monastery that was building an addition onto their friary. The priests so impressed Camillus by their joy and peace. But his sinful side was too strong – once the job was done, he went back to his former life of drinking and gambling. However, a few months later, he came to his senses and realized that he would end up dead or destitute if he kept living such a life, and so, remembering the joy and peace of the Franciscans, he went back to the Franciscan house and asked to become a priest. The Franciscans would have welcomed him, but he had developed an open wound on his leg that refused to heal, and they were afraid it was contagious. They told him that he could come back when the wound had healed. Desperate to get away from his former way of life, Camillus travelled to Rome to the best hospital in the country to get healed. He was appalled at what he saw – conditions in the hospital were so disgusting, inhumane, and foul that he was moved with compassion. After he got well, he decided to dedicate his life to the service of the sick, and he founded a religious order of men who would serve those who were sick and poor. His religious order’s uniform was a long black robe with a red cross on it, fulfilling his mother’s prophecy (and, ironically, giving rise to the American Red Cross, since the red cross became the symbol of compassion for the sick). This former hard drinker, gambler, and womanizer became a great saint – only because he was willing to do the hard work of weeding out the sins and choosing to follow Christ.

            All of us, too, can become saints – if we’re willing to do the work of getting rid of our sins through Confession and changing our lives. Ready to go weeding?