Saturday in the 16th Week of Ordinary Time, July 27, 2024

Matthew 13, 24-30

Jesus proposed a parable to the crowds. “The Kingdom of heaven may be likened to a man who sowed good seed in his field. While everyone was asleep his enemy came and sowed weeds all through the wheat, and then went off. When the crop grew and bore fruit, the weeds appeared as well. The slaves of the householder came to him and said, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where have the weeds come from?’ He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ His slaves said to him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’ He replied, ‘No, if you pull up the weeds you might uproot the wheat along with them. Let them grow together until harvest; then at harvest time I will say to the harvesters, ‘First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles for burning; but gather the wheat into my barn.’ ”

Jesus preaches here to his disciples, who are familiar with his way of preaching and with his parables, and so are in a better position to understand him than the crowds.  He particularly preaches here regarding the kingdom of heaven, a term that does not occur in the prophets or in the apocryphal literature of the time.  It is worth noting that Jesus does not say, “the kingdom of Israel”, the re-establishing of which many Pharisees and scribes expected to be done by the Messiah.  Thus, in his healing and exorcising, the Lord acts, for the Jews, like the long-awaited Messiah, but his words do not lend to this interpretation.  

His parables on the kingdom of heaven do not contain references to uprisings, soldiers, fighting, or victories, either.  Clearly, his kingdom is “not of this world”.  Instead, the objects and occupations of ordinary daily life fill these parables, at once speaking to the common man, and at the same time showing them as signs of heavenly realities.

“The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field.”  Now, this treasure was not buried in the man’s own field, but in another’s.  It sounds like the finder happened to be in this field, perhaps on business, and found the treasure.  It sounds like the finder had a fairly easy time locating it.  He would hardly have taken to digging and excavating another man’s field without permission.  This implies that the owner of the field did not know his field very well.  He did not know what was on it.  This signifies the Gentiles, who found Christ among the Jews and “sold off” their former way of life in order to live as a Christian.  We can also understand this as a Christian man whose devotion is unremarkable suddenly realizing, in an inspiration of the Holy Spirit, how much Jesus loves him, and he completely gives himself over to the Lord.

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant searching for fine pearls.”  Now, we can understand this parable much as we understand the one above, but we can look at them in another way: It is The Son of God who is the merchant in this parable, and he is “looking for” those whom he has come down to earth  to save.  Out of joy in finding us, he sells all that he has — that is, he leaves heaven, becomes man, and endures his Passion and Death — in order to save us.  In his eyes, we are the “pearl of great price”.  As St. Paul reminds us, “You are bought with a great price” (1 Corinthians 6, 20).

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea, which collects fish of every kind.”  That is, everyone is invited into the kingdom of heaven: “Many are called” (Matthew 22, 14).  “Fish of every kind” are caught, that is, those who love Christ for himself, and those who give the appearance of following him for some benefit, such as power or money.  The net is haul ashore, the last judgment, and what is good is kept and what is bad is thrown away.  The Lord adds this explanatory phrase: “The angels will go out and separate the wicked from the righteous.”  Traditionally, it is understood that the mission of the angels on the day of judgment will be to wake the dead, reconstituting their bodies so that their souls can reunite with them.  The angels will then convey the resurrected humans to the place of judgment.  In the image our Lord furnishes here, it is the angels which will separate the “lambs” from the “goats” in the presence of the Lord.  After the judgment, the angels will take the wicked and “throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”  Perhaps the former guardian angels of the wicked will do this.  The “wailing and grinding of teeth” signifies both the agony of the wicked in their torments and of their regret at how easily they could have been saved if they had given themselves to Christ during the short time of their mortal lives.

Finally, Jesus compares the scribe instructed in the kingdom of heaven as the head of the household who brings out both the old and the new.  In the case of the head of the household, that might mean fresh food and aged wine.  In the case of the scribe, it can mean the ability to understand and preach both the Old and New Testaments, revealing how the Old is the sign of the New.  That can be any of us who love the Scriptures inspired by God and treat them as treasures and as pearls of great price.