Wheat Farmers and Weed Exterminators

A few weeks ago I went to an evening Mass at the Catholic Center in the Citadel Mall in Colorado Springs. The Catholic center is a small chapel and Catholic resource center run by a small group of Franciscans, affectionately referred to as “Mall Monks.” (Mall Monks for the win! You can check them out here.)

The gospel at this Mass was Matthew13:24-30 the parable of the wheat and the weeds. The monk who was preaching the homily said, with a twinkle in his eye, “Are you more of a wheat farmer or a weed exterminator?”

You know how every once in a while you hear a single sentence or a phrase that hits you like a lightning bolt out of a clear blue sky? This simple question was like that. In less than the time it took to realize what I had heard I experienced a complete refocusing of my outlook (which was a little bleak at that particular moment.) It might seem strange that I could experience the effect of an idea without really processing it, but I find it happens to me quite often. My mind leaps to a conclusion, and only later am I able to trace it backwards and find out where it came from and how it makes sense.

In every heart there is a hopelessly confused profusion of growing things. Some of these growing things are fruitful and beautiful. There are fruit trees, vegetables, flowers, wheat, shade trees, all manner of life. There are also weeds, brambles, nettles, toadstools, fungi and all types of poisonous, useless, or just plain nuisance plants. They exist in such close proximity to each other that their leaves, branches and even roots intertwine. It is beyond the skill of any human gardener to sort them out. According to the parable, it is beyond even the skill of angels!

I have long had a tendency to look at that wild tangle, or the surface level of tangle which is all I can really see, and see only the weeds. My inclination is to get out my hoe and pruning hooks and start hacking away at everything I can get my hands on, but even in regular gardening that isn’t how you do it, except in the most desperate cases. But that is not how God manages things.

You see, here is the thing about weeds. The devil didn’t invent weeds, he just sowed them in the wrong place. That’s what makes a weed a weed, not the fact of its existence but where and when it grows. No one considers ordinary grass a weed, until you see it growing up between your young corn stalks. The grapevine that is slowly strangling the life out of the purple Lilac by the corner of the barn is only a weed because it is wild and untrained. Properly nourished and in its rightful place it produces fruit and wine to cheer the hearts of gods and men. The Scotch thistle that is horrendously out of place among my beans is achingly beautiful waving in the wind in the pasture on a cloudy day. Even the toadstools and fungi are necessary and good and even beautiful in their proper place. The devil cannot create a single living thing, with all his cunning and power all he can do is take something that was already in existence, alive and growing by the grace of God, and encourage it to grow where it is not wanted.

God, rather than ripping that poor plant out of the ground, allows it to grow. He’ll even start pruning it, which causes no end of frustration to the plant in question, in an effort to make it fruitful. The bruised reed He will never crush. He encourages the growth of all that is beautiful, fruitful and life-giving, or even potentially so, until the very end.

Grow the wheat. Wheat is a plant, just as hardy and just as alive as any weed. The quack grass that sucks the nutrients out of the soil and starves the wheat doesn’t have to be the strongest thing alive. No matter how often you chop it down with the hoe, it will grow back because the root is still there and still alive. But wheat has roots as well. Let the wheat grow. Fertilize the wheat, bank it up with dirt, protect it from the neighbor’s marauding cows and water it. It will grow. It will become strong and it will do your work for you. It will suck the soil dry and leave nothing left over for the quack grass. Prune the fruit trees and build a beehive. Train the string beans to climb their strings and trim the wandering watermelon vine.

Don’t obsess over the weeds. Just bear much fruit. No doubt at harvesting time there will be any amount of dried stalks and old tangled vines and rubbish to toss into the fire, but that is not what God is interested in. He is interested in the sheaves, the bushels, the pecks, the jars and crates and sacks of good things that are our return to Him for all the good things He has given us.

For He came that we might have life, and have it to the full!

Eye of the Storm

A young man, old enough to shave, was walking home from work one evening and took a back street behind the local super market, which he usually didn’t take. He saw that there was a martial arts dojo on that street and as he walked past the door a man came out with a gym bag in one hand and a wooden bokken training sword in the other. He was middle aged, with glasses, of very average build. He looked like he could be a dentist or a barber, except for the wooden sword.


“Practicing some sword fighting?” The young man asked, flippantly. “Pretty sweet. I didn’t know they had sword fighting schools around anymore. Now, if I ever get into a sword fight I’ll know where to come.”

The older man smiled faintly and replied, “if you ever get into a sword fight, it will probably be too late.”

The youth paused, and then, a bit irritated, asked, “Come on, you really believe you’ll ever get in a sword fight? What’s the point of practicing something you’ll never use?”

The older man stopped walking and quietly looked the young man in the eye. Then, without any warning, he dropped the gym bag, both hands seized the hilt of his sword, and before the young man could blink, the sword was poised less than an inch from his temple. The older man had moved like lightening. His face was a mask of rage, and every muscle in his body was taut and straining. He had swung with the speed of a snake and the force of a home run, but had stopped less than an inch short of cracking the young man’s skull

The youth leapt back, spluttering and tripping, and fell over backwards, while the older man relaxed, his face became calm and peaceful once more, and he stood once again with the sword held in his left hand, hanging by his side. He was completely at ease as if nothing ahd ever happened.

The youth scrambled to his feet and ran up in his face. “What the ---- was that? You wanna get your ass kicked, old man? Think you’re really smart and cool? I wasn’t ready that time but if you wanna go I’ll take that stick and shove it up your ass. I ought to ------- stab you…”

“The point is this,” the man said in a low, calm voice, easily cutting through the torrent of expletives. “You experienced fear just then. The only way you know how to respond is with anger and threats. You were afraid, and then ashamed of being afraid, then afraid of being afraid, and then full of hatred towards the one who frightened you. But you do not even know why you were afraid.”

“Of course I ------- know why I was afraid. You swung a ------- stick at my head.”

“It was not the supposed danger to your life that frightened you. If you were working on a construction site and a steel girder slipped and almost struck you, you would not be afraid like that. You would not respond with anger at the piece of metal, even though your life would be just as much in danger. You were afraid because you were created to be loved, and in that instant, you felt hatred. If you trained with the sword you would learn how to stand in the eye of the storm, with hatred swirling around you, and remain at peace. Instead, you can only become what you fear. But the fear does not leave you.

This seems to me something worth learning.”

He carefully tucked the corner of a worn black sash back into his gym bag, before picking it up and continuing to his car.