Jer 14:17-22, Ps 79:8,9,11,13, Mt 13: 35-43
Today’s readings made me think of how St. Ignatius thought about our personal relationships with God. Understanding what St. Ignatius figured out will help us understand what is happening with Jeremiah and Jesus’ parable.
St. Ignatius understanding of our relationship with God has not only been very influential in the Church historically but is especially helpful for each of us. Ignatius came to understand our relationship with God as a personal one. A relationship based on our experiences. The Church has and still does talk about truths and doctrines about God too often. That is fine for learning about God but it doesn’t always help us live our lives better. Everyday life is made easier when we actually understand God is personally involved and as Jesus said, close at hand. Ignatius understood that experience and emotions had more to say about God’s presence and influence than abstract ideas we only think about. When Ignatius wondered about what God wanted him to do he spent time examining his emotional reaction to circumstances and possibilities. By working at being in touch with his deepest self, his emotional core, Ignatius had a better sense of whether this was something God was asking of him. He believed that if God wanted him involved in something, that something would fit Ignatius desires and make him happy and satisfied. However, if the work wasn’t of God, his own reaction would be negative and resistant. Ignatius put together a whole system of how to listen to our deepest self and in doing that recognize God’s desire for us.
Today’s readings can be understood as illustrating the same kind of relationship. Jeremiah is asking God why everything is going wrong and he wants God to relent and change things. Jeremiah is complaining the way a person complains to a friend who is not being a very good friend at the moment. Jeremiah is trying to repair the relationship by admitting where Israel has done wrong and asking for forgiveness. The only difference between Jeremiah and St. Ignatius is that Jeremiah is complaining for a nation and not himself personally. But the conversation is deeply personal and it expects a response. God isn’t some distant abstract being for Jeremiah. God is involved and can be influenced.
In the Gospel Jesus is explaining the parable of the weeds and wheat. What is key to this explanation is today’s last line. “Whoever has ears ought to hear.” St. Ignatius would recognize that kind of challenge.
This is actually the challenge present in all the descriptions of what heaven is like. Can we hear what is being addressed to us? I don’t mean an understanding of what Jesus meant when he said it. I mean right now, when we read these parables do we hear what Jesus is saying? The kind of hearing Jesus is talking about is exactly what St. Ignatius described. It is a hearing with the heart. Does the parable resonate with our experience of life and bring us a new awareness of how closely God is bound up in our lives. Are we affected? Do we have a reaction? Are we touched? That is what it means to hear what Jesus says.
When we listen to readings at Mass or join a Bible group are we listening as if the readings were addressed by God to us personally? We should, because they are. We need to see ourselves in each story, in each parable and realize that to read the Bible, to pray these words is to be open to God speaking to us.
In today’s Gospel we might hear that some people are evildoers who can damage the Kingdom of God while others are more righteous and help make the Kingdom a reality even here on earth. But if we listen even more deeply, we might realize that these weeds and wheat were growing in the same field. This makes me think that we are the field and the wheat and weeds represent our own good and bad qualities. It suggests that throughout our life we get to work out the good and the bad and then at the end of the age God purges what is not good and makes our good deeds shine.
St. Ignatius would say: God is always speaking to us in the events of our lives and we just need ears to hear.
