Sunday Reflection with Fr Paul O'Reilly SJ - 17 July 2011

wheatfield with darnel

"Where does the darnel come from?"

Every time I read this Gospel, I think of a friend called Tom. I don't mind calling his name because you will never meet him. He spent five years in religious life. And at the end of that time he was asked to leave because he was an alcoholic - he was seriously addicted to alcohol and there was no way that, with that problem, he could go on and become a priest. He tried everything he could to stop drinking. He saw psychiatrists and psychologists and psychotherapists; he was put on everything from anti-depressants to anti-psychotics to antabuse. Nothing worked for him. So he had to leave.

It broke his heart.

The only thing he had ever wanted in his life was to be a priest - to work for God and the Church in the world. That, he believed, was what God had put him on this earth to do.

And he couldn't do it.

And, worse, the reason he couldn't do it was because he had a problem within himself that he couldn't control. After he left us, naturally enough, he went on the drink and spent some time being street homeless. He's now been clean and dry for about eight years and works as a librarian. But every time I call him, I find he asks some version of this question: "where does the darnel come from?" Why is it that the Lord would not take away that evil from within him. Why is it that the Lord did not remove the sinful tendency he has and make it possible for him to serve the Lord in the priesthood?

Many people ask the same sort of question: why is it that when I go to confession, I find myself saying the same things over and over again? Why does God not heal me of my sinful tendencies and make me the perfect good person that He created me to be?

Last week, we remembered that six years ago, the people who were forced to ask this question with the greatest pain were the Muslim people. The Muslim people of Britain know now that four of their number committed one of the greatest acts of evil done in this country in recent times, allegedly in the name of their religion. We will never know precisely what motivated these four men. But if it truly was done in the name of Islam, then surely the most painful irony in the whole thing was that the first dead victim to be buried was herself a Muslim, called Shahara Islam. Whatever these men hoped to achieve for Muslims is as nothing to the damage they did to actual Muslims. In truth, this evil was not done in the name of Islam, but to the name of Islam.

British Muslims also know that their religion bases itself on Truth, Peace, Love and Respect for all - including respect for those of other nations, other races and other Faiths. So, where does the darnel come from?

This gospel contains Jesus' answer to that question. So, how does Jesus say that a Christian should respond to the presence of evil either in himself or in the world?

First, we call it by its proper name. "Some enemy has done this". Evil exists - it is a reality in our world and in ourselves. When we meet the darnel in the world, we do not say, "Oh that's just the way the world is." Or "that's just the way I am." We call it 'evil' - the work of the devil. And we acknowledge that just as God is alive and active in the world, so is the Evil One. Because collective evil is not fully explained in any simple rational terms - as a reasoned response to legitimate political grievances or social circumstances. Nor is individual evil simply the natural effect of bad things that have happened in our own individual pasts. It is the work of people whose lives have been damaged by the Evil One.

Second we refuse to be controlled by it. We refuse to be part of the evil ourselves. We do not retaliate. Our God is a gentle God. He does not tear up the good crop that we are growing for him in order to eliminate the evil.

Third, we bring out of it the good that we can. We take our responsibilities to be the Christians in the world:

We have the job of being the leaven. Jesus tells us: 'The kingdom of heaven is like the yeast a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour till it was leavened all through.' Mother Teresa said that the fundamental task of every Christian is to leave each and every person that you meet today a little happier than when you found them.

We have the job of being that mustard seed. Jesus says, "It is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the biggest shrub of all and becomes a tree so that the birds of the air come and shelter in its branches.'"

The Kingdom of God does not grow out of hatred or violence, but out of every single small act of goodness and kindness that every person does in the world.

As Christians we look forward to the harvest of the Lord and certainly Tom looks forward to that day, when the Lord will take all the evil that is within us and gather it in bundles and destroy it. And then, the crop we have grown will be gathered into his barn. We do not fear - we hope - for the day when God Himself will heal all the sinful tendencies within us and make us good for Himself alone - will make us the people He created us to be.

Let us stand and profess our Faith in God who frees us from all the darnel in our lives.

Fr Paul O'Reilly is a Jesuit priest. He is also a medical doctor, working with homeless patients at the Dr Hickey Surgery, in Arneway Street, Victoria, central London.