THE RAIN AND SUN MAKING THE WHEAT AND THE TARE TO GROW

TUESDAY, SEVENTEENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

Reflection from Friar Nicholas Okeke, OP

Jer 14:17-22; Ps 79:8-9,11,13; Mt 13:36-43

The Conditioning of the Good and the Bad

The Scriptures and the Fathers of the Christian faith hold that temporal blessings, or evil, cannot be used to distinguish a good man from an evil man in a strict sense. The reason is that God sends his sun to shine and the rain to fall, equally on the good and the bad. Our Lord teaches this lesson in the Gospel of Matthew 5:45. Thus, concerning physical good or evil, both good and evil men receive equally. These natural things are distributed evenly among the good and the bad. The distinction between the two is possible by the fruits they bear, given the sun and the rain evenly distributed to them. We often desire to see the goodman protected from the evil of the day and the evil man suffer them all because of his evil conduct. That is mostly not the case. Both good and evil men suffer the failure of natural, social, political, and moral systems. Jeremiah describes a situation of physical evil in the first reading. “Tears flood my eyes night and day, unceasingly, since a crushing blow falls on the daughter of my people, a most grievous injury. If I go into the city, I see people sick with hunger; even prophets and priests plough the land: they are at their wit’s end.” Rightly did the prophet describe the situation as a blow from Yahweh.

Augustine of Hippo, using the same term for trials and difficulties, says that the same blow that purifies the saints crushes the wicked and reduces them to ashes. It is Yahweh who administers the blow to the people, for though the blow came as a consequence of the collapse of one system or another, we rightly attributed it to God. The reason is that the intermediate causes of a thing cannot offer sufficient reason for the existence or occurrence of a thing. We must seek a complete explanation from the ultimate or first cause. Hence, God being the Creator of all things, their coming to be or ceasing to be, must be attributed to him. That is, an understanding of the cause of the failure of a thing or system can only be in God. In this sense, God causes his rain to fall on both the good and evil and his sun to shine for the good and the bad. Our knowledge of the science behind the falling of rain and the way the sun shines does not in any way falsify the statement that God causes it to rain for the good and the bad. In the same way, our knowledge of the cause of the collapse of the physical, social, political, and moral systems does not negate the claim that their collapse constitutes a blow delivered by God to the people for his good purpose.

These different events, the fall and the rise of people and systems, constitute the rainfall and the sunshine for the germination, growth, and fruition of the wheat and the darnel in the parable our Lord Jesus Christ told the people. What determines the fruit each bear is what each has stored in his heart. If we have stored the word of God in our hearts, which is the seed of eternal life, then all the rainfall and all the sunshine will make us bear fruits in hundred, sixty, and thirty folds. If we have stored the evil word in our hearts, then all the rainfalls and sunshine will help us bear evil fruits. This is what the Lord explained to the disciples. “The sower of the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world; the good seed is the subject of the kingdom; the darnel, the subject of the evil one; the enemy who sowed them, the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; the reapers are the angels.” The rise and fall of social, political, economic, and moral systems depend mainly on the predominance of wheat or darnels, for while the inner structure of the darnel arises from lies and deception, the inner structure of the wheat arises on the truth of the word of God, on which the structures of the heavens and the earth are built. Even on this basis, it is true that the collapse of the systems of this world is a divine blow through which God purifies and harvests his wheat and gathers the darnel for eternal hell fire. What makes us wheat or darnel is what we keep in our hearts and throw away. “Can any of the pagan nothings make it rain? No, it is you, Lord. O our God, you are our hope, since it is you who do all this.”

Let us pray: Grant us, Lord, your grace to understand that without your word nothing has firm foundation and nothing is holy, that hoping in your mercy and following you as our ruler and guide, we may use the good things that pass as a means of attaining the true riches of heaven.