Once there was a father who had a young son. The son got really into LEGOs, much to the delight of his father, who was also a LEGO lover. One day his son came to him beaming with pride, showing him a car that he had made. There was one small problem: the wheels were made out of rectangular blocks. Not wanting to be overly harsh with his son, the father simply patted him in on the head and said, “Great job, son!” The next day, his son came back to him with another car, again with the rectangular blocks for wheels. Again, the father praised him. This continued for several weeks.
One day the son came to his father in tears. “What’s wrong?” The father asked his son. The son, sniffling, said, “My friends invited me to have a LEGO car race with them. I was all excited, because you had always told me how good my cars were. But then, when we put them on the starting line and they said, “On your marks, get set, GO!” They pushed their cars and they all zoomed off, but I pushed mine and it didn’t go anywhere! Then they all laughed at me!”
The father in this parable had a misplaced sense of compassion for his son. If he had just corrected his son in the first place, which might have bruised his ego, he would’ve set him up for success later. This parable gives us an image of what happens when someone with the wrong intentions cultivates our hearts. The father was simply misguided, but there are those at work in our own hearts who are actively working against us.
When Jesus speaks of the parable of the weeds and the wheat, He speaks very clearly about the weeds being sown by the enemy, Satan. The warning for all of us is to have our hearts set on the goal of Heaven by inviting God to cultivate our hearts. When we do this, we allow the Holy Spirit to bring forth good fruit in our lives. The danger for us is to go the other direction; to let our hearts not be formed, but deformed by the world, the flesh and the devil.
So often, the concupiscence of our flesh keeps us from pursuing the things of God. We could pray, do works of love, cultivate God-centered relationships, but other things keep us distracted. Our hearts get set on lesser things and end up twisted in knots of sin. The world, which is fallen, often tells us that money, power, influence and other, lesser goods, will ultimately make us happy. But this is a lie, and it wounds and even tears our hearts apart. Finally, as Jesus warns about, there is our enemy, the devil. He is the ancient opponent of our human family, constantly trying to sow seeds of doubt, distrust and division in our hearts. His temptations draw us to try to be our own masters apart from the One who would shepherd and guide us to good pasture. When we allow this fallen angel to be the cultivator of our souls, only vices can grow, because Satan is the father of lies and will only twist the truth of who God has made each of us to be. His ways lead us down dark paths of addiction, loneliness, hatred, isolation, and countless other areas of deep brokenness. The devil’s only goal is to ruin the garden of holiness which our souls are meant to be. He can only distort.
This is why it is so necessary for the Church to boldly speak of sin, forgiveness and redemption. If She failed to call out the error of things such as the killing of unborn lives, the twisting of human sexuality and marriage, and the unbridled idolization of money, power and influence, then She would fail to live up to her mission to proclaim the Good News. We are called to proclaim difficult truths because we believe in Jesus, who is the Way, the Truth and the Life. We warn about sin and its disastrous consequences because we trust Jesus when He talks of the judgment against those who deceive others. With God’s help, we are called to be people who come against deception.
It is not popular to speak difficult truths, but it is loving. We recognize that love consists not just in making people feel good, but in helping them become who God made them to be; helping them experience communion with the God who is love. We can grow in loving communion together as a Church and invite others to share in it, but only by calling out what is opposed to God, and thus opposed to Love.
We are called to fix our eyes on the perfect embrace of love in the Trinity in Heaven and let that goal be the measure of all that we do here on earth. When we have that singular focus, it enables us to be open to the God of Love cultivating our hearts. This cultivation won’t always be pleasant. Often God needs to pull out the weeds beginning to take hold in us, but that is so we can experience His true joy in this life and the fullness of that joy in the life to come.
Think back to the parable we began with. The father in that parable offers an example of how lies hurt us, especially the lies of the devil, who is the father of lies. The father lied to his son out of misplaced compassion, causing him humiliation and a lost race. The father of lies deceives us out of malice and can cost us our eternal salvation! He doesn’t want us to succeed, and so he steers us wrong through a thousand different lies. These may not manifest themselves immediately, but as time goes on, they will cost us, just as the father’s failure to tell his son that the wheels were wrong cost him the ability to compete in the race with his friends.
Brothers and sisters, how much more important is the race in which we find ourselves? Our race is the journey of our life, and our destination is Heaven! Our Heavenly Father is the one who can guide us to that ultimate destination that will fulfill our hearts, where we will shine like the sun in the kingdom of our Father! So let’s, as St. Paul says, “run so as to win.” Let’s not be afraid, with love and respect, to both proclaim and live the truth as God has called us. Let’s encourage each other so that together we can allow the Father to cultivate the garden of each of our hearts and then, through our words and example, open others to the goodness of the Father’s work in their hearts.
+ Heavenly Father, help us to be open to your work in and through us, cultivating all of our hearts to be with you forever. Jesus, our savior, keep us by your grace from the deceptions of the devil. Holy Spirit, help us repent of any weeds which we have allowed to grow in the garden of our souls. We ask this through Christ, our Lord. Amen. +