Homily for the 5th Sunday After Epiphany Resumed

The following is a transcript of the homily given at the Monastery of Our Lady of the Cenacle at Silverstream Priory last Sunday. The Mass texts are repeated on ferial days that are not occupied by another feast.

The Parable of the Wheat and the Cockle

In these weeks, we are now resuming the Sundays that weren’t celebrated after Epiphany. But still we are concluding the time after Pentecost, coming to the end of the liturgical cycle. And so the Church is very conscious of the Last Things: the end times, the final struggle of the Church against evil. And the prayers and the readings of today’s Mass bring us face to face with that struggle against evil—with the fact that, in this good world which God has created, we nonetheless find so much evil which seems incompatible with His omnipotence, with His goodness, with His wisdom. This is the problem that has vexed so many throughout the ages, which has made it so difficult for so many to believe in God: the presence of evil in the world.

St Augustine in Matins this morning spoke to us about the explanation of the Parable in the Gospel (Matt 13:24–30): the field, Our Lord goes on to say later in the Gospel, is the world, and the good seed is the children of the Kingdom, and then the devil comes and sows evil seed. St Augustine identifies this evil seed as the heretics: they appear to be like the good seed; the cockle originally looks just like the wheat. So the heretics have the name of Christian but they are teaching false doctrine, and only in time does it become clear that they are not the genuine article. So side by side in the world are the true believers and the heretics. One could apply this more generally to all the evil that is present in the world which passes itself off as good but whose fruits are revealed in time.

Thoughts of Peace and Not of Affliction

We are never able to understand fully the workings of God’s Providence. God does not have to justify his ways to men—He is far beyond us—but our Lord gives us an indication here of what God is up to in allowing this. The householder knows that there is cockle in the field along with the good wheat, but he knows that if he were to pull up the cockle straight away, then he would risk pulling up the good wheat as well. So in the world God allows evil only to bring about greater good. All that God does is for our good: this is what the Introit is assuring us in the words of the Prophet Jeremiah: ‘The Lord says: I think thoughts of peace and not of affliction’ (Jer 29:11). These words are spoken by Jeremiah–the prophet who perhaps more than any other spoke about affliction! He denounced the false prophets who told Israel that everything was going to be all right, that they would not have to go out to exile in Babylon, that they should resist the Babylonians who were coming in and taking over. Jeremiah says: ‘No, you have earned this by your sins: God is delivering you into the hands of the Babylonians; resistance is futile.’ He says essentially that they have to accept what’s happening; they should not put their hopes in false promises of security: everything is going to be destroyed, they’re going to lose the temple, they’re going to lose their city, they’re going to lose their land. They have to resign themselves to a long exile–and yet even as he’s telling them all this, Jeremiah says, the Lord thinks thoughts of peace and not of affliction.

These thoughts of peace, then, are not a simple message that everything’s going to be all right: they are thoughts of peace in the very midst of affliction. God is indeed allowing his people to be chastised, to experience the consequences of their sins, but He’s doing so for their good. Even in allowing affliction, His thoughts are not thoughts of affliction: they are thoughts of peace, and the affliction, whatever it might be, is directed towards peace, directed towards allowing His people to expiate their sins, to come back to their senses, to return to Him, so that eventually He can bring them back from their captivity. God’s thoughts of peace don’t mean that there won’t be trials: it means the trials that He allows will be for our good, and so it is that He allows the cockle to grow up in the field, knowing that in some way this will make the good wheat stronger. Rather than pulling it all up straight away, He’s going to let them both grow. He allows evil to exist in the world so that His faithful ones can grow in virtue through resisting it, so that they can be tested, so that they can show their love for Him, so that they can have a greater reward in heaven for having struggled.

The Cockle within Our Souls

So it is that He allows evil in the world–even within our own souls. One of the things that the fathers of the Council of Trent wrestled with was the question of how it is that even after our justification, even after our baptism, we have to struggle against concupiscence: against the tendency towards sin. The Church defined that concupiscence–the inclination towards sin that we have because of original sin–is not itself sin, and yet it can incline us toward sin. There’s a disharmony within us and God let this persist even after He takes away our sin in Baptism, even after He forgives our sins in the Sacrament of Penance. These effects of original sin and of our personal sins committed after Baptism still remain within us. God doesn’t take them all away immediately–and here too, if He does this, if He allows this, it must be for our good, because He is thinking thoughts of peace. He allows concupiscence to remain in us so that, by struggling against it, we can show our love for Him; we can exercise our wills; we can grow in virtue; we can gain merit; we can ultimately become stronger.

So often we can become discouraged when we look at ourselves and see how much cockle there is. Even though there is good seed in us, the seed of God’s grace planted in us in Baptism and strengthened through the other sacraments, we still see all of the cockle, all of our vices, all of our tendencies towards anger, gluttony, lust, sloth, pride–all the vices that are in us that are growing up alongside the good seed. God chooses to allow us to fight in this world against these vices that are growing up within us, so that we will ultimately be led to place our confidence in Him and in Him alone.

Leaning Solely upon the Hope of Heavenly Grace

This is what the antiphons and the prayers of this Mass urge us to do: ut quae in sola spe gratiae caelestis innititur, tuo semper protectione muniatur, we said in the Collect: ‘so that Thy family which leans solely upon the hope of heavenly grace might always be defended by Thy protection.’ Our hope is not in any innate natural goodness of ours–we lost that long ago. Our hope is solely in God’s grace which comes to us in His Son Jesus Christ. But He promises us His assistance when we call out to Him. He said in the Introit: Invocabitis me, et ego exaudiam vos, ‘You shall call upon Me and I shall hear you’ (Jer 29:12). He shall hear us and do what we pray for in the Secret of today’s Mass: as we prepare to enter into the Holy Sacrifice we will say, ‘We offer unto Thee, O Lord, the sacrifice of propitiation, so that Thou mightest mercifully absolve our offenses and mayest direct our nutantia corda’–literally ‘our nodding hearts’, our hearts which are shaky, which are unstable. We ask God to direct them, to make them stable, to make them firm in His ways. And then, as we come to receive Our Lord in Holy Communion today, we will hear Him speaking to us in the Communion Antiphon: ‘Amen, I say unto you, whatsoever you shall ask in prayer, believe that you shall receive it, and it shall happen to you’ (Mark 11:24). This is Our Lord’s word to us this Sunday, as well as last Sunday and during all these Sundays towards the end of the year: His word to us as we come to Him in Holy Communion, telling us that this is the moment to ask and receive. If we ask Him then, as He comes bodily into us, we are sure to receive if it is for the good of our souls. So, having heard that word, we will go on to ask in the Postcommunion, ‘that we may obtain the effect of that salvation the pledge of which we have received in these Mysteries.’ The Eucharist is the pledge of eternal life, the beginning of eternal life, already grasping under the sacramental veils what we hope to enjoy with faces unveiled in eternity. And we pray in the Postcommunion of today’s Mass that we might receive the effect of that salvation: that one day this will come to full fruition in us in the glory of heaven. And Our Lord says to us: ‘Believe that you shall receive this and it shall be done to you.’ And so, despite all the weeds all the cockle that’s growing up in our souls, God’s help is promised to us if we call upon Him with confidence.

The Word Dwelling in Us Abundantly

In the Epistle St Paul describes for us what the result of God’s grace can be: he paints for us a complete picture of the Christian life. There are few passages in the New Testament that provide such a perfect summary of what a Christian is called to be–and thus also what a monk is called to be: his description of mercy, benignity, humility, modesty, bearing with one another– and then, over all these, ‘Have charity which is the bond of perfection’ (Col 3:14). And that charity leads to peace: the peace of Christ exulting in our hearts. He tells us to let the word of Christ dwell in us abundantly, and this breaks forth in psalms, in constant thanksgiving, and doing all things in the name of Our Lord Jesus. This is what the good seed is meant to look like as it bears fruit, and this is what is possible for us, not by a natural goodness of our own, but by the grace of God–above all by the grace given to us in the Holy Eucharist, which is the seed of eternal life, the good seed planted within us.

The Good Seed of the Eucharist

Paul says, ‘Let the word of Christ dwell in you abundantly’ (Col 3:16). The word of Christ is the good seed, and in the Eucharist not just the word of Christ, but Christ Himself who is the Word, the Word incarnate, dwells in us abundantly and can bear fruit in all of the charity and patience and peace and thanksgiving which St Paul describes here. All of this is made possible by the seed of the Eucharist planted within us–that seed cultivated above all by the intercession of Our Lady, who shows us most perfectly how to be all that St Paul describes in this Epistle. The Word made flesh dwelt in her most abundantly, and she shows us how to sing to God in psalms, hymns, and spiritual canticles: above all that canticle of hers which we sing every night, the Magnificat. We ask her as we receive Our Lord today to tend that good seed of the word which He is planting within us. We know that there is still cockle within our souls, which God has permitted in His infinite wisdom for us to struggle against it. But we know that one day, as the good seed comes to fruition,  in God’s good time the cockle will be rooted out, and what will remain will be the result of the good seed of His grace planted in us through the Eucharist. That good seed will bear fruit in the wheat which we gather into God’s barn in heaven, where we will look upon Him in glory as we will then constantly, eternally, be able to sing in our hearts to God.