Gospel Reflection on Matthew 13:24-43

July 19, 2026

Another parable he put before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the householder came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then has it weeds?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he said, ‘No; lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’”

Another parable he put before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”

He told them another parable. “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till it was all leavened.”

All this Jesus said to the crowds in parables; indeed he said nothing to them without a parable. This was to fulfil what was spoken by the prophet:

“I will open my mouth in parables,

I will utter what has been hidden since the foundation of the world.”

Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples came to him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.” He answered, “He who sows the good seed is the Son of man; the field is the world, and the good seed means the sons of the kingdom; the weeds are the sons of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the close of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the close of the age. The Son of man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and throw them into the furnace of fire; there men will weep and gnash their teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.

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In agriculture, the issue of seed purity is of great importance.

It's practically impossible to be certain that a given batch of seeds is all from the same kind of plant. There's almost always some seeds similar in shape, but from a different plant. And so it's very difficult to sow only the seed you want to plant. There's always something foreign present.

The same issue arises when we're speaking. The ideas we express can be understood by different people in different ways. It's very frustrating when our words or our actions give rise to unexpected fruit. How irritating when we're misunderstood or when our acts give rise to consequences we never intended.

It seems every good action encounters problems. One of the worst forms of opposition is sabotage. It's so devastating when we discover that someone has deliberately set out to undermine our work. But the worst kind of sabotage happens when we did it to ourselves. Sometimes we're our own worst enemy.

All of us have sown seeds and eventually been strangled by them.

These experiences make us aware that there seems to be an enemy to the progress of humanity. We will encounter challenges almost inevitably once we start doing something good. Every job has its struggles; the education of children has its misunderstandings; the business of building up the Christian community encounters a whole range of religious parasites. So what do we do?

In the parable in question, the first approach is to presume there was something wrong right from the start, and the classic proposal is made to the master: 'Do you want us to go and eliminate it? Remove the problem? Eradicate the evil wherever it appears?'

We whip ourselves into a weeding frenzy, certain we know the difference between weeds and wheat and how to deal with the weeds. This is the perfectionist hypothesis that transforms good works into anxious nightmares, where, in short, the main mission ceases to be doing good and becomes avoiding evil. And then the spiritual life becomes focused on what should not be done.

When this happens, we forget the vitality of the good.

It's interesting in the story that the Master is not anxious about eliminating the bad: for him, the good is the only thing that matters. His strategy is aimed at not losing any part of the good seed; the background noise does not drown out the beauty of the melody.

He is not determined to root out anyone who does not agree with the right interpretation of scripture, liturgical practice, or a stand on a particular issue.

The Sower, who we have discovered sows so generously, is also the one who says, "Let the weeds and the wheat grow together." That's risky. We can't pretend to understand it, but it should generate compassion towards ourselves. After all, we're a field of weeds and wheat. Everything is a mixed bag, a combination of good and bad. We're not all weeds, but we're not all wheat either. We have to learn to accept and forgive this mixed bag of reality. If we don't, we'll become very angry.

Our world is filled with a lot of angry people because they can't accept their own weeds. To accept this teaching doesn't mean we say, "Okay, it's alright to be selfish, violent." It means simply we have to have some realism about ourselves and each other. We have to name the weed as a weed. We can't pretend it's all wheat, all good, because it isn't. We're not all perfect. Our country's not perfect. The church isn't perfect.

The project of learning how to love, which is what life is about, is quite simply learning to accept this. If you really love someone, and I hope we all do, then you have learned to accept a person despite and sometimes in spite of their fault, because of their faults.

What love means is to say, 'I know your faults, I see your weeds, I care for you anyway.'

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