Harvest: the Fruit of Patience & Impatience

Introduction

Parables of farming

Last Sunday’s parable was about a farmer who went out to sow seed and some fell on inhospitable terrain, and others fell on good rich soil. Today’s parable is about another farmer who sowed his field with good wheat grain only to have it overrun by a bumper crop of weeds. Both farming parables are timely, as we are now rushing toward the fullness of summer and are about to pluck the first fruits of the harvest--our first tomatoes and cucumbers. The few farmers left among us, who still put our hands into our good Mother the Earth, can appreciate these earthy parables much more than a supermarket culture can. That culture doesn’t have the slightest clue about the food chain.

An e-mail on farming

Timely also is a piece of e-mail with an attachment, recently sent me. I always appreciate such e-mails which enable me to share worthwhile thoughts with you. The attachment comes from an editor’s desk, and it is entitled Things Want to Grow. It reads:

At this time of year, the heat begins to build and early green becomes deep, and tender shoots turn hardy. It prompts a memory of my grandfather. He was a short man with a mild limp and an upper lip full of moustache. A straw version of a fedora covered his bald head, and I see him walking between the rows of pole beans. He was an Italian immigrant who arrived here in the early 1900s. On the basis of a photograph, he sent passage for the sister of a friend he met here from the same region of Italy, and the two of them married within days of her arrival. They went on to raise nine children.

If memory serves me, there was always a large garden behind the farmhouse in southeastern Pennsylvania where my grandfather reared his family. And it seems, in my memory, that gardens have always been a part of things.

My father was an excellent gardener, and his brothers still are. They have a nonchalance, an ease about gardening that can be unnerving to the new gardener full of enthusiasm for precisely how things are supposed to be done. They remind me of a German orchardist whom I once interviewed. When asked how he managed to produce such spectacular Winesap apples, he shrugged his shoulders and said, “Things just want to grow.”

Perhaps that was the allure. There was a nonchalance about families and gardens and the like, which I (editor) experienced at some point in my life. Things just wanted to grow, and there wasn’t an inordinate amount of fussing about exactly how. There was, instead, an easiness with it all, an understanding that in the matter of people and plants, not much could -- or should -- be done to rush things.

Right off the bat I felt affinity for that piece from an editor’s desk. For me, too, “gardens have always been a part of things.” I have always kept my hands stuck into our Good Mother the Earth. Yes, even in the inner city I grow tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and yes, good old Italian pole beans. I go through this bother every year not because I can save money on groceries and not because I can’t do better by going to a good supermarket that carries top-notch produce. I do this because it is the yearly sacred thing to do. Not to do it would be to disrupt the natural rhythm of my year. I do this because it keeps me in touch with a very fundamental truth (which comes as a great surprise to city folk) that food does not come from supermarkets but from farmers who cultivate our Good Mother the Earth. I do this also because an honest-to-God tomato is infinitely tastier than a man-made one from a supermarket.

Yes, indeed, that piece from the editor’s desk is right--“things do want to grow.” I live on the second floor in a typical Milwaukee house. Without an inordinate amount of fussing I planted pole beans, and then from my second-floor window I let down cords to the pole beans below. They’ve already climbed fourteen feet, and in a week or two I’ll be picking pole beans from my kitchen window. Yes, indeed, things want to grow.

Patience

Yes, indeed, “in the matter of people and plants, not much could -- or should -- be done to rush things.” In a garden you have to have patience. In today’s parable a farmer has sown a sack full of good wheat grain in his field. But as the days go by, he discovers he’s got a bumper crop of weeds springing up choking out the wheat. The hired hands come rushing in exclaiming, “Boss, didn’t you sow good wheat grain in your field? How come there are so many weeds popping up all over?” The master thinks his neighbor has done something foul, because one day one of his cows got into his cornfield. The hired hands want to rush out and rip up the weeds. But the boss, who is a better farmer than the hired hands, cries out, “No! No! For God’s sake, don’t do that. If you rip up the weeds now, you're going to rip up the wheat as well. Let’s be patient. Let the wheat and weeds remain side by side until harvest. Then at harvest I will say to the harvesters, `First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned. Then gather the wheat into my bins’” (Mt 13:24-30). In a garden you can’t rush things. You’ve got to be patient.

That reminds us of another parable of Jesus. A fig tree standing fruitless in a farmer's vineyard is taking up precious space. The farmer wants to chop the darn thing down. But a hired hand who is a better farmer than the boss, pleads, "No! No! For God’s sake, sir, don't do that. Let's be patient and give the tree a chance. Let's try hoeing around it and fertilizing it. If after that it bears no figs, then we'll chop it down" (Lk 13:6- 9).

My take on today’s parable is that all human life is a mix of wheat and weeds side by side, and we’ve got to be patient with the mix until the day of harvest. All human joy is a mix. There's always some shadow that falls upon it. All human goodness is a mix. Our humility is dabbed with pride. Our generosity is faintly sprinkled over with self-interest. Our so-called God-centered lives subtly point also to ourselves. All human beings--our kids, our spouses and we ourselves--are a mix of wheat and weeds. And yes, even our church is a mix of wheat and weeds. I recall an old saw that says if you find the perfect church and join it, it won’t be perfect anymore.

Perfection comes only on the day of harvest. That’s the day of the great clarification, when the field will be cleared of all weeds and only golden grains of wheat will be gathered into bins. Until then we’ve got to have patience with the mix. Patience is no shabby word. It comes from the Latin verb patior, pati, passus sum. It means "to suffer." Patience is the power to suffer that mix of wheat and weeds in our kids, our spouses, ourselves and, yes, our church, until the Son of Man comes.

The impatience of Dominic Emmanuel, SVD

But neither is impatience a shabby word. In my book impatience is the refusal to suffer the mix of wheat and weeds in the human condition, and it is the determination to address it. That’s the impatience I see written all over another attachment to an e-mail recently received. In an open letter to the new pope, Fr. Dominic Emmanuel, SVD, addresses the mix of wheat and weeds in his church. He writes:

Your Holiness Pope Benedict, sincere congratulations on your election. In this Year of the Eucharist I would like to share a major problem with you that practically all of us in India often face, and not without some embarrassment. Here in Delhi hundred of people visit the cathedral regularly. Most of them are Hindus or Sikhs who spend time reverently in prayer and silence, and many of them even light a candle before leaving church. Such scenes are moving and often ignite me with an evangelistic zeal to reach out to them. Many of these Hindus and Sikhs return to attend Mass, often showing greater devotion than many of our own Catholic faithful.

Yet before the distribution of Holy Communion, the celebrant announces that people of other religions should not come forward to receive the Eucharist. I have seen the face of those being excluded suddenly fall. Some of them become angry at this exclusivity of the church. Two years ago I met a man who vowed never to go to a Catholic church again because of this prohibition. What could I possibly say to his question, “Do you think that if I approach Jesus Christ in person, he would tell me to go first go and fulfill the requirements of baptism and confession and then come back to meet him?”

I would like to know, dear Pope Benedict XVI, what is the best way to handle such a situation, especially since Hindus and Sikhs come from a tradition where, at the end their worship in the temple, they are used to receiving a tiny bit of some sweet substance called Prasad in Hindi.

Emmanuel’s letter is sprinkled over with a veiled impatience which refuses to suffer this weed in his church and with a determination to address it.

The impatience of Francis Gonsalves S. J.

It’s easy to detect the same impatience, less veiled, in Jesuit Fr. Francis Gonslaves, also from India. He, too, in an open letter to the new pope quotes a line from the homily Benedict preached on that day of his inauguration: “My real program of governance is not to do my own will, not to pursue my own ideas, but to listen together with the whole Church.” Then Fr. Gonslaves cries out, “Bravo, Pope Benedict! Many Indians who religiously listen to God’s voice in nature and in other faiths and in their neighbors complain that the Roman Catholic Church only speaks but never listens,” only teaches but is never taught.

The impatience of Barbara Marion Horn

Not veiled, by any means, is the impatience of Barbara Marion Horn. In a letter to Archbishop Weakland, this feisty lady from Ireland berated an ordination ceremony she witnessed in St. John’s Cathedral. She said the ceremony unabashedly featured an exclusively male clergy splashed across the sanctuary. The oldest and deepest exclusion of society, she scolded, is alive and well even within the very sanctuary of my church. And that, she said, deserves the same whip of cord which Jesus used on other desecrators of the temple (Lk 19:46).

But she was balanced. She recognized also the mix of wheat in her church. She ended her letter saying, “I appreciate having an archbishop and an assistant bishop to whom I can feel open enough to convey these reflections. Originally from the East coast, I am forever grateful to have landed here in Milwaukee. This Archdiocese has introduced me to a Catholic Church heretofore unknown. And so here I am, simultaneously holding gratitude in one hand and deep impatience in the other.”

Conclusion

Harvest: the fruit of patience and impatience

Life is a mix of wheat and weeds side by side till harvest.

And it is also a mix of patience and impatience side by side till harvest. And in the garden of life, in the garden of all growing things, whether they are our pole beans, or our kids, or our spouses, or our church, wisdom and courage know when it is time to be patient and when it is time to be impatient. Because of both the pole beans, which madly want to grow, will reach the window on high.