「Spiritual Talk」Sixteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time – Fr. Anthony Ho

by Kenny Cheng
2020-07-18

This weekend, the Church celebrates the Sixteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time and the Gospel reading contains the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares, in which evil men sow bad seeds among the good. St. Isidore once said that God permits the good and the evil to live amongst each other until the Last Day so that the evil would have time to repent, just as Saints Matthew and Peter received second chances from Jesus after repenting of their sins. Good and evil are intricately linked in this world and uprooting evil will often uproot good as well. Good things are also linked to suffering and pain. Just as parents will bring their children to the dentist, so God permits us to suffer in order to obtain the greater good of spiritual healing. If we give up because we fear suffering, then love will die in us. Pope Benedict XVI once said that the temptation for many people is to expect speedy progress in the spiritual life and they then become disappointed once their progress is slower than expected. Our spiritual journey is often more like the slow and steady growth of a seed and cannot be hastened. Those of us with a mission to evangelize for God must remember to offer up the speed of their missions’ growth to God and let them develop under His guidance.

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