Spiritual than Human

July 23, 2023 – 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Click here for the readings (https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/072323.cfm)

Life is difficult. These are the first words, the first sentence in M. Scott Peck well-read book entitled: The Road Less Travel. Somehow these words reflect our own experience of life. Life is never been that easy. Though we try our best to make life easy and convenient, we experience life as never been always convenient and easy. Life is indeed hard and difficult.

This is not only because others have made and are making our life difficult, but also we ourselves are difficult and have made life difficult for others at times – that within us there is a struggle of irony and inconsistency going-on. This is true not only in others but also in you & me. Like, inasmuch as I try my best to make life easy and convenient for me and others, there are still people who find me at times difficult as well as I also find myself difficult. Much as I want to be OK, others and even me find myself not-OK.

This is why Jesus is wise enough to tell us three parables today (the parable of the wheat and weeds, and its explanation, the parable of the mustard seed, and the parable of the yeast) to teach us that growing in life is difficult and has never been easy. As we grow and live in life, it is unavoidable that we have to go through the painstaking and difficult process of growing up because within us, there exist a creative tension of ironies and inconsistencies, as well as grace and goodness.

It is indeed hard, for instances, to a teen-ager or a middle-age person to be not anymore young but not yet old, or for an elderly person, to be old in age but still young at heart and mind. Difficult indeed for a married couple, who in their younger age wanting to be independent from their parents, now wants their married children to be dependent on them. Paul must have known how hard life is and the irony within ourselves, when he says: “I do what I don’t want to do and be what I don’t want to be; I don’t do what I want to do, and don’t be, what I want to be.” 

Human as we are, we recognize that we have to deal and grow up in difficulty with the ironies and inconsistencies within us – both good and bad, the wheat and weeds, sinner and saint, strong yet weak, big but still small, already not-yet, insignificant yet important within us.

As we struggle and grow up with the difficulties and hardships of life, we might learn something in our gospel today.

First, God sees and hopes for the best and not the worse in us. He did not only recognize, but also aids our being weeds, in our smallness and weakness. He is indeed good and forgiving who has faith in our basic and potential goodness.

Second, for us is just to try to grow in His grace, and the rest is God’s business, not our business. Meaning, He, not us is the Lord of harvest. Ours then is to grow and bear fruit, not to reap the harvest.

And lastly, for God’s grace to grow in us, we must learn how to let go of ourselves, let God and things be, and let new things happen and grow. For God to reap a good harvest in us, somehow we allow Him sow wheat in us, let it grow in us even in difficulty with weeds, and let it bear fruits for the harvest. Yes, it is indeed a struggle, a tension, but it is a CREATIVE tension. Thus, Life though difficult is above all life-giving and life-creating, and basically good always in God’s eye.

In life’s difficulties and hardships, perhaps we may find consolation with the words of Tielhard de Chardin, a famous Jesuit scientist-theologian of our times: It is not that we are human being having spiritual experiences, but rather we are spiritual beings having human experiences.

In other words, in life with its difficulties and hardships, we must always not forget that we are more spiritual than human.