XVI Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
Mt. 13:24-43
We continue listening to chapter 13 of Matthew, which offers us, after that of the sower, three more parables: that of the wheat and the weeds, that of the mustard seed, and that of the leaven.
All three begin with the same incipit: "The Kingdom of heaven is like ..." (Mt 13:24,31,33), and it seems to me that they answer a single question: how does the Kingdom of heaven come, how does it manifest itself? But also: how does evil act, how does it try to hinder the growth of the Kingdom?
Hidden among the images of the parable, just as the seed is hidden in the soil, the Gospel offers us several answers.
The first is that the Kingdom, when it grows, does not wipe out evil: the good seed is sown in the ground, destined to bear good fruit. But in the same soil other seeds are sown, which instead only take up space but bear no fruit.
We would expect the sower to prevent the two seeds from growing together, from coexisting, but this is not the case: this is the logic of his servants, but not his own, and this is perhaps the great novelty of the Kingdom.
While the servants exclude the possibility that wheat and weeds, good and evil, can coexist, for God it is exactly the opposite: God loves man by giving him time, and this time is necessary so that the favorable time in each person's life can come, the moment for each person to open himself to salvation.
And what is this favorable time?
Exactly the moment when man opens his eyes and sees that the weeds have also grown in his own field, as in every man's field: only then is the desire for salvation born in man, which can become confident prayer and, therefore, filial, and fraternal existence.
Jesus, after all, did exactly that: he turned the image of God completely upside down, the God whom in fact everyone in his day was waiting for, and whom we often want as well. John the Baptist himself had just announced such a God, who, flail in hand, would clean out his threshing floor to harvest the good grain, while he would burn the straw with an unquenchable fire (Mt. 3:12).
It is interesting that this parable, among the three ones, turns out to be the least understandable, to the point that the disciples ask for its explanation (Mt 13:36): it is difficult for us to think of a God who acts like this; it would be much easier to think of an all-powerful God, who, without delay, destroys all enemies. That is not how it happens: the possibility of the favorable time happening in life is for everyone, no one excluded. This is the great conversion that awaits us, but this is also our true hope and the only real possibility for a free existence.
All this demands that we open ourselves to patterns that are not ordinarily the most coveted among men: the parable of the mustard seed (Mt 13:31-32) tells us that a logic of life, like the one described in the parable of the wheat and the weeds, necessarily cannot be based on grandiose styles and imposing means. Instead, it prefers the beauty of what is small, of what does not impose itself, of what knows the humble law of growth and becoming, the law of life, of the human.
Finally, the parable of the leaven (Mt 13:33) confirms all this: the Kingdom is not a fenced-in space, where only the good and the righteous enter, but a way of life where one is continually in contact with the ambiguity and complexity of life, with nothing and no one deemed unworthy of the encounter that saves.
The parables, we said, also tell us how evil works to prevent the growth of the Kingdom: its way is first and foremost to act in secret. While the good grain is sown by day, evil needs to hide and seeks to deceive: evil acts by night (Mt. 13:25), taking advantage of those nooks and crannies where our vigilance slumbers.
And it wants to go unnoticed, trying not to be recognized: the stalk of wheat and the stalk of weeds are actually very similar....
One last observation: to the disciples' question asking him for an explanation regarding the parable of the weeds, Jesus actually does not answer, does not explain (Mt 13:37-43). He "only" gives a message: in the end, evil will not prevail, will not win. On the contrary, evil will eventually disappear, will have an end. But, for those who will have accepted the new logic of the Kingdom: for them the light will continue to shine.
" Whoever has ears ought to hear" (Mt 13:43), Jesus concludes. It would seem to be a phrase put there just to end the discourse, while perhaps it is the key to it: how to stand in the world, with its contradictions, with its temptations? How to live a life exposed to evil, without being crushed by it?
Simply by listening, by letting the Word take deep root: this is how the Kingdom comes.
+Pierbattista
