The Mystery of Christ
The Liturgy as Spiritual Experience

by Father Thomas Keating

Chapter 4 Part VI

Ordinary Time

The Parables

    "It is one thing to communicate to others conclusions and admonitions based on one's profound spiritual experience . . . It is quite another thing to try to communicate that experience itself, or better, to assist people to find their own ultimate encounter. This is what the parables of Jesus seek to do: to help others into their own experience of the Reign of God and to draw from that experience their own way of life."
(John Crossman, "In Parables," p. 52) 

The Reign of God

    Jesus proposed to the crowd another parable: The reign of God may be likened to the man who sowed good seed in his field. While everyone else was asleep, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and then made off. When the crop began to mature and yield grain the weeds made their appearance as well. The owner's slaves came to him and said, "Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where are the weeds coming from? He answered, "I see an enemy's hand in this." The slave said to him, "Do you want us to go out and pull them up?" "No," he replied, "Pull up the weeds and you might take the wheat along with them. Let them grow together until harvest. Then at harvest time I will order the harvesters: `First collect the weeds and bundle them to burn. Then gather the wheat into my barn.'" 
    He proposed still another parable: The reign of God is like a mustard seed which someone took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest seed of all, yet when full-grown it is the largest of plants. It becomes so big that the birds of the sky come and build their nests in its branches. 
    He offered them still another image: The reign of God is like yeast which a woman took and kneaded into three measures of flour. Eventually the whole mass of dough began to rise. 
    All these lessons Jesus taught to the crowd in the form of parables. He spoke to them in parables only to fulfill what had been said through the prophet: "I will open my mouth in parables; I will announce what has lain hidden since the creation of the world."
 [Matt. 13:24-35]
Gospel of the 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time

    The parables reveal Jesus as a wisdom teacher of extraordinary qualities. In order to understand his teaching, we need to understand the nature of what he calls the reign (or kingdom) of God. The reign (or kingdom) of God does not consist of a place, a form of government, or even of the rule of God over our actions and interior life. It is not an organization into which we are supposed to fit. It generally introduces itself by an event (or a series of events) that changes our lives. Many of the parables describe situations in which someone's life is suddenly turned upside-down. In these parables Jesus seems to say that this intrusion into one's life is how the reign of God manifests itself. To allow one's life to be turned upside-down requires a change of heart. And a change of heart presupposes a certain disenchantment with what we have been considering happiness.

    The parables were directed to people who were just coming out of their selfish programs for happiness and becoming aware that there is an alternative. It is not easy to let go of what we believe to be essential to our happiness even for the sake of participating in God's reign or kingdom.

    At the beginning of our conversion most of us experience the gnawing sensation of wanting to move more deeply into the reign of God and to be able to find it in daily life. At the same time, we want to hang onto our emotional routines, fixations, ways of looking at things and our commentaries on people and events that exasperate us. These three parables offer encouragement to those who are beginning the path or struggling along it.

    The reign of God is not so much what we do under God's inspiration as what the divine action does in us, with or without our cooperation. The reign of God often is disruptive, to judge by many of the parables. One day Jesus told a parable about a day laborer who was digging in a field and found hidden treasure. [Matthew 13:44] With the endless movement of armies throughout the Holy Land during the pre-Gospel period, people often hid their valuables in open fields with the hope of coming back later and recovering them. So it was not extraordinary for someone digging in a field to come upon a hidden treasure. The parable concludes: "Immediately, he went and sold everything he had and bought that field." I suppose he built a mansion somewhere. His good luck changed his life. He was no longer a day laborer.

    In another parable, Jesus recounted the story of a man who was in the jewelry business. One day he found a pearl of great price, so he sold everything he had and bought that pearl. [Matthew 13:45] This purchase changed his life in much the same way that winning in the state lottery today completely changes a person's life-style. The reign of God breaks into the course of our ordinary occupations, business or family life and changes things around. It is what we do with that intrusion that determines whether we enter or belong to the reign of God or not. The willingness to allow God to walk into our lives, tear up our plans and throw them in the wastebasket is a good beginning.

    These two parables emphasize the fact that the reign of God is what happens. It is not any one thing that happens. It is the fact of God's entering our lives at any moment and shifting things around, and our consenting to the break-in. Once we have found "the pearl of great price" or "the treasure hidden in a field," a conflict arises between our desire to be open to the continuing intrusions of the reign of God and our habitual unwillingness to change or be changed. What do we do with that? The three parables in the present text offer insight and encouragement.

    A householder of apparent wealth sowed wheat in his field. Shortly there appeared a "weed." This weed was not just any kind of weed; it was darnel, which is the spitting image of wheat. It is very hard to distinguish the two. The zealous farmhands asked the householder how this mischance had come to be. He said, "An enemy has done this." They asked, "Shall we pull out the weeds?"

    "No," he replied, "let them grow until the proper time. Then we will have the harvest and separate the two, lest in pulling up the weeds, we lose some of the wheat."

    This parable is a warning to over-zealous reformers to go at a pace that will not destroy the good even if it is mixed up with a lot of evil. There will always be a mixture of good and evil in everything until the end of the world. The parable reminds us that we must put up with the evil in ourselves and have a friendly attitude toward our weaknesses. We feel the attraction of grace to move to an ever-deepening spiritual commitment to God, but our resolutions seem so tenuous at times that we fear we may lose them.

    But Jesus seems to be saying, "Don't worry about it " God expects that we will experience confusion and weakness. We may at times be unable to discern where our attitudes and actions are coming from, but the parable implies that the wheat is more powerful than the weeds and will eventually win. At some point in our spiritual journey we will be ready for the separation of the wheat from the chaff. God warns us to give the crop time to mature and to leave the harvest to him.

    The parable about the mustard seed suggests a positive view of the conflict. The mustard seed is one of the tiniest and most insignificant of all seeds, but when it is put into the ground and allowed to grow to maturity, it turns into the biggest of all shrubs. Birds come and build their nests in it. The message is that the reign of God, like the germinating mustard seed, is incredibly powerful even though its energy is out of reach of our faculties. Though it seems insignificant to us and we feel overwhelmed by the density of the weeds, we should have no fear. With time the seed time will grow in spite of the difficulties that seem to be overwhelming it.

    The third parable is about the yeast in the dough. Yeast is a living organism and requires water to be activated. The activating principle in the reign of God is faith. The divine action is at first hidden from our psyche. So, too, yeast is hard to identify when it is hidden in the dough. But its inherent power, when activated, gradually causes the dough to rise. Similarly, the reign of God with the consent of faith has the power to transform; it changes us into something new.

    Jesus lays out the principles, offers the invitation, gives encouragement and finally appeals to our freedom: "If you wish, the reign of God is yours. But you have to take the responsibility of deciding. If you choose to enter it, you have nothing to worry about. The evil in you will not overcome the good that has been sown. At some point, the life you now experience with so much conflict will be transformed, and all the evils that weigh you down will disappear."

More information can be obtained by reading the book The Mystery of Christ by Fr. Thomas Keating.  It is offered in our Book Store.