We need to practice patience. First of all, we need to be patient with ourselves. We may not get everything done perfectly this week, but that’s okay. Then we must be patient with the others – those who annoy us by the way they drive their cars, whose opinions differ from ours, who make too much noise and disturb us and who make our spiritual progress more difficult for us by their bad example. Let’s practice patience, remembering, in the end, it is God who controls.

Let us patiently and lovingly treat the “weeds” in our society as our brothers and sisters and do all in our power to put them back on the right road to heaven, especially by our good example and our fervent prayer for their conversion. Let us ask these questions for self-examination: This parable was told so that we might not go around judging others. Judgment is the function of God the Father. Instead, the parable asks us to take a close look at our own life with the understanding that one can judge one’s own heart, then repent and bear good fruit. It is a time to look at our own sins and at the way we conduct our own life, then to make a decision about our own repentance.

Our gospel lesson asks us whether we are secure in our faith life. Are we secure in the knowledge that one day will be judged as wheat or weed? How often have we been a “weed” in the garden of the Lord? Would we, knowing what we know now, like to have been plucked up at those times? God is so merciful that he permits evil to exist in order that what is good may grow. Through the power of the Spirit, God can change even the ugliest thorn into a blossom of faith. In God’s field, we have two responsibilities: to grow in grace and to share his Word and love with others.