Robert Barron - The Parasite of Evil
Peace be with you. Friends, we're reading during these weeks of summer from the 13th chapter of Matthew's Gospel, which is just a masterpiece. It contains many of the great parables of Jesus, and these were just a typical form of teaching. Jesus rarely taught in sort of doctrinal form. He taught through these evocative stories. The parables often turn things upside down. They reverse our expectations. They make us think in fresh and challenging ways. We have many today, but I want to focus just on one because it's so rich, I think, both theologically and spiritually. It's the famous parable of the wheat and the tares, to give it its classical name. We might just say the wheat and the weeds.
See, remember, here's how the story begins. The kingdom of heaven may be likened to a man who sowed good seed in his field. While everybody was asleep, his enemy came and sowed weeds all through the wheat and then went off. When the crop grew and bore fruit, the weeds appeared as well. So the sower of the seed here, well, there's the Lord. And what's he sowing? Well, the good wheat of the kingdom. Think of all the manifestations of Christ's activity in the world. Think of the church at its best. Think of saints. Think of everyday holiness. That's the wheat that's come from these good seeds that have been sown.
But while everybody was asleep, and that's important to notice, very often, the infiltration of evil comes in hidden and clandestine ways. We saw it clearly coming. Oh, look, there's evil. We act, but very often it happens behind our backs. It insinuates itself in sort of sneaky, hidden ways while everybody was asleep. Notice too please here, sleep. I've often told you this in the Bible is a negative symbol, a negative trope. It means lack of spiritual awareness. Think of the three disciples sleeping in the garden of Gethsemane while Jesus is struggling. While they were asleep, think of David having his long siesta on the roof of his palace before the Bathsheba incident. Sleep means lack of spiritual attention. While they were asleep, not attending, wickedness found its way into the church, into the world of the saints, et cetera.
So when the crop grew and bore fruit, the weeds appeared as well. Here's lesson number one I think from this. We should expect corruption and evil within even the best manifestations of the kingdom of God. Let me say that again. We should expect corruption and evil even within the very best manifestations of the kingdom of God. Remember, years ago when I was a student at Mundelein Seminary, we had this marvelous professor, he's gone to God now, called Charlie Meyer, Father Monsignor Meyer, and he taught church history. And Charlie, we called him, took a certain delight, I would say, in telling some of the stories of the corrupt popes and bishops and hierarchs of the past.
And it happened every year that students who would come to the seminary full of idealism and a certain naivete would be scandalized by these stories. And Charlie would sort of give a little wicked smile. Well, see, there was something really salutary about those history lessons because he was showing the truth of this. Yes, the church up and down the ages in all of its glory, yes, in the saints and yes, in the great and holy popes and leaders, yes, indeed. But from the beginning, there's always been corruption, sin, degradation within the life of the church. We should expect it. How come? Because an enemy's been at work. That's what the parable says.
So in terms of the parable, it's some enemy of the sower of the seed. Maybe it's just a rival farmer or something. But we know what it means in this spiritual order. Without falling into some form of Manichaeism, it's not like God against some coequal dark power. That's Star Wars. That's not the Bible. Nevertheless, the Bible does indeed speak of these dark and destructive spiritual powers that stand to thwart the purposes of God. And indeed, anyone who's kind of mature in the spiritual life knows this, the more the glory of the kingdom is manifested, the more the dark power goes after it. The clearer the operation of grace, the more aggressive the operation of the dark power.
An enemy has done this, has purposely sown these weeds among the wheat so that as the wheat grows up, there it is, yes, beautiful and healthy in itself, but look at now surrounded by the weeds. That's what's wonderful about this image. It's not as though you've got, well, there's the wheat and oh, there's the weeds are over there next to it. No, no. They grow up together. The weeds winding themselves around the wheat. Now, that's what's really devilish about this, and the parable is very good at showing it. Watch please as he goes on with the story. His slaves said to him, "Do you want us to go out and pull them up"? He replied, "No, no. If you pull up the weeds, you might uproot the wheat along with them".
There's a very deep metaphysical and spiritual truth here everybody. First, the metaphysics of evil. Augustine saw this. Thomas Aquinas saw it. All the great masters. Evil is not something substantive in itself. Evil is as Aquinas put it, privation boni. It's a privation of the good. It's a corruption of what's good. It's a lack in something that is otherwise good in itself. I'll give you a silly example of a cavity in your tooth. What's evil about the cavity? Well, it's this corruption of something good. The tooth is good and has an important natural purpose, and now it's got a cavity in it. It's got a corruption in it. What this means is evil is always, listen now, parasitic upon the good.
Again, it's not like, well, here's good and there's evil. No, evil by its very nature is in the good. It's a corruption of the good. It's parasitic, therefore upon the good. Or think of a cancer that's compromising an organ. Well, the organ is good, it's doing its healthy, natural thing, but now the cancer is corrupting it. What's the implication? It is practically impossible ever simply to get at evil without threatening in some way the good. Do you see why? So you're a skilled dentist and you notice, well, there's a cavity in a tooth.
Well, let me just go in there and get it out. Well, it doesn't work that way. You don't just go get it out or let's put the tooth to one side and I'm going to fight that cavity. No, the cavity's in the tooth. And therefore, if you want to solve the problem of the cavity while still retaining the integrity of the tooth, you have to be very, very delicate and careful. Talk to any surgeon, any oncologist dealing with a cancer, the same thing. You're dealing with a tumor that is parasitic upon some healthy organ. Just go in there and get that cancer out. Well, you better be pretty careful about it.
All right, move outside the realm of physiology. How about a corrupt parish, a corrupt church, a corrupt community? Is the corruption evil? Yeah, of course it is. All right, I know. Just go in there and get it out. Well, just like the tooth, whatever there is that's corrupt in let's say a parish is parasitic upon what's good and healthy in the parish. It has to be. It's just the way it works. You say, but that community, boy, that thing is rife with sin and with corruption. Yeah, but to get that out without destroying the community itself, you've got to be very careful. It's a lesson that I think young priests often have to learn because they'll get into a parish, it's a typical rookie mistake, and they see right away, oh yeah, this is a mess and this thing is not working.
Yeah, okay. Right. But the wise pastor might say, but you can't go in there with two hands and just rip it out. You've got to be extremely delicate and careful to extricate the evil without destroying the good. See, and that's why the master says in the parable, "No, no, if you pull up the weeds, you might uproot the wheat along with them". Remember everybody, that principle. Think of the weeds wrapping themselves around the wheat. Tear those weeds out, yeah, and the wheat comes up with them. So what's the conclusion? Listen now to the parable. The master says, "Let them grow together until harvest. Then at harvest time, I will say to the harvesters, first, collect the weeds and tie them in bundles for burning, but gather the wheat into my barn".
What's being signaled here everybody is that yes, we are on for dealing with evil when we see it and with requisite delicacy and all that. Yes, indeed. But also at the end of the day, some evils can be dealt with only by God. It's only God who has the delicacy and the wisdom to separate the wheat from the weeds. Maybe sometimes in the presence of terrible evil, we have to be patient and allow God to do his work. And now, one more point here. Might it be the case that sometimes, I know it's a high mystery, I know, and it's a frustrating mystery too, that sometimes God permits evil, as Augustine said, to bring about some greater good. Might it be that God has permitted some corruption and some evil precisely for his ultimately good purposes?
As many point out, the sex abuse scandals we've been going through in the church for the past now, what, 25 years, did they affect a real cleansing in the church? Absolutely it seems to me. Am I making excuses? No, no, no, no, no. But seeing sometimes how God might permit certain forms of evil to bring about a greater good. Let me give you one last one from Aquinas, and I know it's puzzling, and I know it's a little troubling, but it's right on this point, and it's quite interesting.
Thomas says, "Sometimes God permits even sin so as to allow certain virtues to appear". His example, without the cruelty of the tyrant, there's no patience of the martyr. Think of all the martyrs who were killed by terrible tyrants. Well, I know it sounds weird to say, but without the tyrant's wickedness, you wouldn't have seen that virtue. I'll give you a real particular example. Maximilian Colbert, think of the great saint of Auschwitz. In all of his spiritual power and glory, simple fact that without Hitler's oppression, there would be no Maximilian Colbert.
Does God sometimes permit, I know it's awful to say, and we don't always see it, I'm giving you that one example, but we typically don't see it clearly, but does God sometimes permit the weeds to wrap themselves around the wheat for his own purposes? Now, none of this is designed to give, oh, here's the clear cut answer. Here's the problem of evil, and here's how I deal with it, 1, 2, 3. No, it's a story that sheds light everybody on different aspects of this very thorny problem. So take a look at it this week. Maybe take out your Bibles, go to Matthew chapter 13 and find this parable, and think about your own struggles with wickedness and with sin in light of what the Lord's telling us here. And God bless you.