Monday, 26th Week of Ordinary Time

Matthew 13:36-43
The Daily Office

Today, we read Jesus’s interpretation of the parable he told a few verses earlier of the weeds among the wheat (Mt 13:24-30).  Or in the old King James, “tares”; or what scientists today call “darnel.”  So what’s in a name?  Quite a lot actually.  Darnel is a grass, not a grain.  It is in truth a “weed” that we would just as soon pull up from out front yard.  But when it first grows, it looks suspiciously like wheat.  So that in Jesus’s parable, the master of the house had to warn his workers against pulling up the darnel too early.  At an earlier stage of growth, there truly would be no way to distinguish the useless weed from the healthy grain.  And so the Master of the House said, “Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn” (v.30).

Yesterday, I attended the closing service for the Kairos prison ministry at the St. Clair prison.  There before us visitors were the darnel, the weeds that the outside world too readily gives up on.  But there they were, in tears of joy, conquered by love and ready to spread that love inside that “correctional institution.”  Of course, correction means to correct, to turn, to improve.  Too often, we assume that those in prison are beyond correction.  But the harvest time that Jesus refers to in v. 30 is a final judgment that will be God’s to give, not ours.  Until then, let the wheat take courage and go among the darnel.  You might be surprised to see how much grain is there.