Waiting for Peace

Today’s readings, Jeremiah 14: 17-22 and Matthew 13: 36-43, are awesome! Jeremiah cries out to the Lord, distraught over the destruction he sees in his country: people are being killed, left to rot in the fields. People are starving in the cities.  Wherever he looks he sees the effects of evil.  Sounds like Jeremiah is living in 2016: every day, on the news, we hear of individuals being gunned down,  stabbed, beaten (whether that be physical, verbal, or emotional).  Every day children are abandoned, neglected,  abused, sold into slavery, become victims of the sex industry or drug traffickers. Every day babies are killed in their mother’s womb. On and on and on we see evil, that is, we witness  people ensnared by Satan’s deceptive maneuvers, lured into becoming wealthy by any means or avoiding inconvenience or sacrifices that are part of life here on earth.

  

Like Jeremiah, we could ask God: “Have you cast Judah (us) off completely? Is Zion (insert the name of your city, country, State) loathsome to you? Why have you struck us a blow that can not [it seems] be healed? We wait for peace, to no avail; for a time of healing, but terror comes instead.  We recognize, O Lord, our wickedness,” or do we?

And God says to us, through Matthew 13:  28-30,   Do not pull out the weeds, those doing evil in the world,  because “when you weed out the darnel you might pull up the wheat with it. Let them both grow til the harvest; and at harvest time, I shall say to the reapers:  ‘First collect the darnel and tie it in bundles to be burnt, then gather the wheat into my barn.’”  In Matthew 13: 41-43, Jesus says to us that at the end of the ages:  “The Son of man will send his angels and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of falling and all who do evil, and throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and grinding of teeth. Then the upright will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.’ Anyone who has ears should listen!”

Are we listening? And, what am I doing to bring about healing: to decrease wickedness, to lessen violence (verbal, physical, emotional, spiritual) in my relationships, to bring about peace in the world, that is, in the family, in my religious community, in the parish, in the municipal or civic community in which I live?

God's Grieving and God's Compassion

In today’s first reading, Gen. 6: 5-8; 7: 1-5, 10, God regrets having created humankind. “When the Lord saw how great was… [humankind’s] wickedness on earth, and how no desire that his heart conceived was ever anything but evil, he regretted that he had made… [humankind] on the earth, and his heart was grieved.”  However, Noah and his household found favor with God and so was spared. 

 

As we contemplate the evil in today’s world, we must wonder whether God does not again regret having created humankind. Yet we also know that amidst the evil around us there is also good. In the Gospel’s parable of the darnel, the disciples wanted to pull the weeds out of the field and Jesus said: “No, [do not do that], because when you weed out the darnel you might pull up the wheat with it. Let them both grow till the harvest; and at harvest time I shall say to the reapers: First collect the darnel and tie it in bundles to be burnt, then gather the wheat into my barn” (Mt 13: 24-30).

It is difficult to watch the “darnel” grow along side the “wheat,” yet we know that at the end of time, at the final judgment, God will separate the good from the bad. Those committed to evil and unrepentant will be cast into eternal fires while those committed to good, aware and repentant of the evil they have done, will enter eternal glory.  Rather than ranting and raving about the evil in the world, it is our responsibility to continue doing good and being honest with ourselves  when we fall into Satan’s traps, repenting of the evil we have done and returning to the Lord our God.   As we enter the holy season of Lent, let us do so aware of how evil in this world grieves the heart of God and our own hearts.