Letting the Wheat Loose Among the Weeds
Some of you here may be farmers. Some of you have a garden, or even a window box. I think most of you probably know how difficult it is to deal with weeds. In the parable that Jesus tells, the weeds and the wheat are left to grow together until the harvest.
On the day of our Baptism we are anointed with the Oil of Catechumens in a ceremony called the “Exorcism”.
This little ritual recognises that every child grows up in a world where good and evil exist side by said. We pray that the child who is to be Baptised will have the strength always to live in the grace of Baptism.
But that prayer does not come with a guarantee that we will not be tested. There will always be weeds among the wheat.
In his “Confessions”, which he wrote towards the end of his life, St. Patrick tells the story of his own struggle with the power of darkness. He was brought up in a Christian household and his father was a deacon, but it seems that he slipped away from the practice of the faith.
Some accounts of his life suggest that, along with some of his friends, Patrick dabbled in the occult. Young people today will tell you all about peer pressure.
I think we all know how easy it is for good young people to lose their way, because of a mixture of curiosity, a desire to try things out, and of course the negative influence of others.
It seems that, by the time Patrick was taken into captivity, he had wandered far from God, but clearly God had not forgotten him or abandoned him.
In the loneliness of his captivity God spoke to his heart and he began to pray.
The story of his return home and how he heard in his heart a call to return to Ireland as a missionary is well known.
What often strikes me about it is the Courage it must have taken to face back into a country where he had been held in captivity and treated as a slave.
Even if we accept that the stories of St. Patrick’s achievements are somewhat exaggerated, it is clear that the Holy Spirit was at work in him.
He worked hard; he faced persecution both from the pagans and from some of his fellow monks, but in the end the harvest of faith was great and the “weeds” did not take over.
Every year, of course, is new planting and new harvest, and faith can never be taken for granted.
Even in the so-called “Island of Saints and Scholars”, people had to struggle with their own smallness and sinfulness.
It would be unrealistic to think that we could be Christians without the cross.
The personal experience and the writing of St. Patrick in his Confessions would seem to suggest that, while bad example and peer pressure can lead us away from Christ, our faithful living of the Gospel can inspire many people around us to come to faith or to come back to faith.
But why should that not work in reverse. Immagine what could hapen if the wheat gets in among the weeds.
When we look at Irish society today, and at the world around us, there are many reasons to be discouraged. We only have to think of the violence and the disregard for human life on so many levels in society, and the complete disregard for human rights and international law in the wider world.
What we don’t read about in the papers is the huge number of parents making sacrifices very day for their children; the numbers of people, young and old, giving freely of their time and energy in the service of the poor, the sick and the lonely, every day of the week.
In the midst of the carnage in the Middle East, young men and women from our own Dioceses are serving the cause of peace in South Lebanon, witnessing to the fact that there is a better way.
The parades on St. Patrick’s Day tend to serve as a showcase for so much that is good in our society; for industry and sports clubs and for public services.
What often goes un-noticed is how faith can impact of the way we do all of these things.
Think of the crucial difference it makes when people of faith bring the values of the Gospel, values like justice and truth, into the way we engage with one another in business and in sports, in our provision of services, in education and in politics.
That is what St. Patrick’s Day is really all about.
I want to finish by turning to the Reading we had from St. Paul.
As he comes to the end of his own life, his focus is on encouraging Timothy, who is only starting out on his mission, to preach the Gospel with integrity and with patience, and not to be disturbed when the enemy comes in to sow the seeds of destruction.
This reading is clearly chosen for the Feast of St Patrick, to encourage us, who are the disciples of Jesus today, to take up where Patrick left off and to bear witness to the Gospel in our own lives. It is not without significance that Paul, an older man, was entrusting his mission to Timothy, who is a young man.
There are many young people of faith in our Church, even if they are not always as visible as we would like.
We have much to learn from them, but we also have to find a way to work and pray alongside them in our parishes.