Ordinary Time 16 - Weeding the Soul

 

Homily for Ordinary Time 16

July 19, 2026

Weeding the Soul

 

            If you have a garden, weeding is a necessary but unpleasant task. If you have a soul, weeding out our vices is another necessary but difficult task. And there are a good number of similarities between weeding your garden and weeding your soul.

            First, what are the weeds? It can be understood on several levels: first, Jesus is making the point that the Church will be full of both saints and sinners until the end of time. In this understanding, it’s Jesus Who does the weeding. As St. Augustine said, “The church is not a hotel for saints, but a hospital for sinners” – which is good, because we are all sinners, so we are welcome here – not to remain sinners, but to be healed to become saints!

            But there is another interpretation – these weeds are also our vices. All of us have both virtues and vices in our soul. Virtues are those good character traits that make us like Christ, and vices are those habitual sins which make us quite unlike him. In this case, we cooperate with Christ in rooting out these vices!

            Our Catholic tradition gives us seven main vices, often called the Seven Deadly Sins. They are: Pride, Wrath (which is unjustified and uncontrollable anger), Greed, Envy, Sloth (which is laziness, particularly laziness in the spiritual life), Gluttony, and Lust. All of our other sinful habits fall under these categories. These are the weeds which choke out the good fruit of virtue in our soul. So how do we root them out? The same way we weed a garden.

            First, we focus on the big ones first, but without neglecting the little ones which can grow into big ones. We have a weed called mugwort which grows in every nice patch of flowers around here, but also gets to be six feet tall! It’s my crusade to rid this campus of this noxious weed. Likewise with the soul, examine your heart to see which is the most prevalent of your vices. Some people have a temper; others are tempted to lust; others struggle with pride. Last month, a young teen came to me in great distress and exclaimed, “Father, today was the worst day of my life!” I asked him why and he said, “Because I got braces!” Yeah, you and every other teenager in history – it was a struggle with the sin of vanity! Let us focus on the biggest one that we see in our life – as Thomas a Kempis said in the famous book, Imitation of Christ, “If you eliminate one vice every year, in short order you will be perfect!”

            But it’s far easier to root out a weed when it is small, when the roots are shallow. So it is with us – we must make sure not to overlook our small sins, lest they take root and become much harder to overcome. It is truly dangerous in the spiritual life to say, “Oh, it’s not a big deal that I gossiped once…that I indulged an impure thought…that I took something small from the store.” Every weed was once a seed…and every addiction, bad habit, or vice was once a seemingly-small and insignificant deed. Cut it off as soon as you see it cropping up in your life!

            Weeds can be frustrating, though. We have a weed called bittersweet on our campus and it’s utterly tenacious. I will cut the vine right down the ground – and it will put up four new shoots for every one that I cut. I have to be diligent and cut it continuously before it dies. Likewise, we must be persistent in overcoming vices. It’s not enough to come to Confession just once; we must come frequently. It’s not enough to overcome temptation once; we must fight it until we die. A young seminarian once asked a Bishop, “When will I be free of temptations of the flesh?” The wise bishop responded, “About five minutes after you’re dead!” All the saints know that they were still capable of sin – one time a person said to St. John Vianney, “You’re so good at hearing Confessions!” And the holy priest replied, “If I am a good Confessor, it is because I am first a great sinner.”

            One thing I’ve noticed when I’ve weeded is that the hole in the dirt left by the weed is actually perfect for more weeds to grow, unless we fill it with something good. As the old saying goes, “Nature abhors a vacuum” – and so does the soul. St. Paul tells us that “we reap what we sow” – if we fill our life with good things, prayer, sacramentals, uplifting thoughts, good deeds, we will have a much easier time to become saints. I love how St. Padre Pio would always, I mean always, carry around a Rosary with him, even sleeping with it. He would call it “his weapon” – the best thing to fight against the Evil One and his own vices. One day a man came to him and boasted, “Padre Pio, I prayed four Rosaries today!” The holy priest responded, “That’s wonderful! I have prayed 32!” His life was so filled with a love for Our Lady and Our Lord that there was no space for vices to take root.

            Finally, weeding is easier when we enlist help! My dad used to pay us a dollar if we filled up a bucket with weeds – it went quickly when all five kids were helping! Likewise, we can quickly eliminate the bad habits and sins in the garden of our soul if we enlist the help of the saints, Our Lady, and Jesus Himself. This isn’t something we just grit our teeth and try hard, but rather, we simply allow Jesus to do the work Himself. It’s not by accident that Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene after the Resurrection as a gardener – it is He Who can take out the weeds of our vices and replace them with the fruits of holiness!

            I challenge you, today, to consider what vices you need to work on – and to commit yourself to using the tools Christ has given us to root them out of your life. No matter who you are, we all have vices we need to root out – even the saints. I think, for example, of St. Fortunatus. He worked for the kings and queens of what is now modern-day France back in the 500s, but his job was somewhat unique – he was the official court flatterer. He wrote poems and songs to praise the nobles, using his tongue to butter up and flatter the king. But after a while, he realized that, although it paid the bills, it’s not what his gifts of music and song was meant to be for – it was only his pride and greed that made him such a fawning sycophant. He left the court and became a bishop, and started writing poems and hymns about the Lord – many of which are still sung in the Church today. In order to become a saint, he had to overcome his vice of pride and greed – and, in giving that up, found the treasure of Heaven!

            All of us have the weeds of vices in our soul. But with the Lord’s help, and diligent effort, we can make genuine progress in the garden of holiness, that we may bear the fruit of virtue for the Lord!