A Homily for the 16th Sunday throughout the Year
Given at St. Patrick's in Wareham
By Rev. Fr. Ronnie P. Floyd, STL
Who told me that her son always says to her,
“Don’t worry mom I am not going to hell”
Whenever she encourages him to take his faith more seriously.
And I thought to myself, He’s not?
How does he know?
In a day and age where people are so quick to forget God
And dismiss heaven,
How is it that so many people seem so sure they are not going to hell?
I mean Hell is a reality of our faith, you cannot be a Catholic Christian
And not believe in the reality that Jesus talks about in the Gospel today
And throughout the scriptures.
I often remember the humility of St. Paul’s word’s
in his first letter to the Church in Corinth, he says:
to me it is a very small thing to be judged by you, or by man;
but neither do I judge my own self.
For I am not conscious to myself of any thing,
yet am I not hereby justified; but he that judgeth me, is the Lord.
St. Paul reminds us often that Jesus’ teaching,
judge not lest you be judged
applies equally to ourselves as it does to others.
People often misinterpret Jesus, thinking that He is saying,
Mind your own business,
don’t tell other people if they are doing something wrong
When in fact, Jesus CONSTANTLY does this,
and tells us to do so too!
Love, requires us to correct out brothers and sisters when they sin
Because we don’t want them to go to Hell
We want them to please God and accept His love
“Judge not lest ye be judged” in fact means
That we must never write off the possibility
That the worst sinner could go to heaven
OR…. That the kindest person could go to hell.
After all, we believe that
all it takes is one serious sin.
At St. Paul tells the Phillipians:
work out your salvation with fear and trembling
because the determination, about whether we are wheat or weeds
is the gardener’s call.
My friends, HELL IS NOT A BOOGIE MONSTER
Designed to scare the children into being good.
In a strange way the logic, necessity, and reality of Hell
Is more readily evident in this sinful world,
than the much more obscure reality of heaven
St. Paul says: eye has not seen nor ear hear nor has it ever entered the heart of man
what God has prepared for those who love him.
BUT EYE has seen the results of sin,
We need not think back very far.
War, the debt crisis, murder, rape, iniquity, injustice
The 5 o’clock news daily shows us a glimpse of the reality of hell
And just like in Hitler’s Germany
though a few really bad men orchestrate things, each and every day
a lot of minorly bad people, like you and I make it possible.
People who play minor parts or sin simply by standing by
and watching evil happen.
Hell is not just for the really bad, but for those who make evil possible,
By not bearing fruit, not loving,
for in reality evil is simply the absence of good!
As the French philosopher John Paul Satre once quipped:
“Hell is other people.”
When we fail to remember God and seek to love and serve Him
Our selfish pursuits prove this statement true.
In the Gospel today Jesus speaks of each of us as seeds,
Full of so much potential and growth,
But some seed, sowed by the enemy uses this potential
not to build up God’s kingdom but tear it down.
When I was praying over this passage
I thought to myself how wonderful a parable it is, full of meaning.
Have you ever asked yourself: what is the difference
between weeds and wheat?
I am not a farmer but I would guess that wheat bears fruit
While weeds do not, instead just taking up space and choking out
The desirable plants.
I use to think that weeds were a particular type of plant
But then I realize that weeds are simply undesirable plants
If we expand this definition to a more diverse garden
We see that the difference between weeds and wheat
truly is in the eye of the beholder, or rather the master gardener
I remember my grandmother always joking about the fact that
Back in the day, I am guessing during the depression,
she and my great grandmother would gather dandelions,
a weed to many, for salad.
She found it amusing that dandelions were now very fashionable
The same I am told is true of lobster,
Which at one point only fishermen ate.
Lobster was the accidental byproduct of fishing
for the types of fish people actually desired.
The gardener in Jesus’ parable has a design for his field,
The yield he desires is grain.
He who planted is by right the judge of the good and the bad
Of the desirable plants and the weeds.
And so we must ask ourselves
what is the fruit which the master gardener desires?
Which is the fruit that He will gather into his barn?
The fruit is love. For He says:
Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart,
and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole strength.
And these words which I command thee this day, shall be in thy heart:
This essentially is God’s one desire of us—
so simple that Augustine actually says: LOVE,
and do whatever else you want.
God desires real fruit though, and not just words.
In many ways the weeds look like the wheat,
This is why it’s so important not to judge, ourselves or others
But continuously to strive to bear fruit.
First by loving God,
And if we love Him, desiring to know Him better.
We do this simply by acknowledging the goodness of every life
And seeking its source.
Each of us has a desire put in our heart by our maker
For our maker.
No matter what doubts or difficulties or questions we have about God
First and foremost LOVE requires us to authentically seek Him
Aristotle, a pagan, often accused of atheism, observed this
long before the Birth of Christ.
As Blessed John Paul II once noted, we are not being authentically human if we ignore our hearts desire to know God, we allow the business of life to cloud our minds to the mysteries of life.
And because He reveals Himself to us, love also requires that once
we begin to know him we eventually seek to serve God
by loving our neighbor, our brothers and sisters, and even our enemy.
This is the fruit He desires, the question we must ask is
Are we bearing fruit?
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