Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Matthew 13: 24-30
The ‘Opening Prayer’ for Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time prays ‘show favour, O Lord, to your servants and mercifully increase the gifts of your grace, that, made fervent in hope, faith and charity, we may be ever watchful in keeping your commands’.
The Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness (Romans 8:26). Saint Paul, time and again, reminds us to be vigilant and watchful at all times. Paul introduces us to God the Holy Spirit as an intimate and compassionate friend. The Spirit knows us and loves us and because he is God, he knows better than anyone how to help us. Therefore, our life of faith is always life led by the Spirit.
So always be encouraged when you feel at a loss or when difficulties come your way. Remember that the Spirit of God makes intercession for you. Remember that your heavenly Father hears and answers the prayers of the Holy Spirit. And always keep this in mind: “If God is for us, who can be against us?”
When we speak of the devil or of the enemy, as in our Gospel text, it invites us to reflect, first and last, that we should always remember that the devil is God’s creature. The devil has no separate field of his own in which to grow his weeds. Evil, as Saint Augustine says, must parasitically feed on what is good, for all of its work is destruction. The devil cannot establish a separate kingdom of his own because God is sovereign. Thus, in order to create his own kingdom, the devil is reduced to vitiating God’s. He is permanently confined to being a spoiler of God’s good work. Although he aspires to being lord, the devil has no centre in himself no existence of its own.
The devil’s strategy consists in his sowing the seeds of hatred in our weak hearts. The devil can find an entryway into God’s field, the world, only through the exhaustion of creatures (“while men were sleeping,” Matthew 13:25) and their failure to keep vigil. The enemy cannot operate openly and honestly but must undermine God’s good work by exploiting the vulnerability of God’s chosen ones.
And so we pray, loving God, in your love, you have sown the good news of the Gospel in the wilderness of the world and brought it to flower and fruit through the death and Resurrection of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Grant us the wisdom to recognise your love at work in hiddenness, the faith to trust in your love at work in weakness, the hope to live by your love at work in darkness, that all the world may grow to the fullness of life you offer in Christ our Lord. Amen.