Wake Me Up Before You Go Go
Something is happening.
It’s small, almost imperceptible. But the Spirit – the One of whom Paul speaks in today’s letter to the Romans – is at work, searching hearts and stirring souls to act.
It might be better to say: stirring souls to wake up.
Some are beginning to do just that.
This past week, a young man drove up to Elkton from Baltimore seeking spiritual advice after a friend challenged him to return to Mass. He had been away from the practice of Catholicism since his early days of high school. He is now approaching 30.
A young woman – a teacher in one of our Catholic high schools – approached me last week asking how she herself could become Catholic. “I love watching our students receive Communion,” she told me. “I want to be a part of that sacred moment.”
Both of them are seeking something beyond themselves – greater than themselves – and what struck me so powerfully in both of these encounters was that both of them said the same thing as they shared their journey:
“I wish someone had told me sooner about who Jesus really is.” The young man from Baltimore went a step farther, adding: “I feel like I have been asleep in regards to my faith for far too long.”
I think we all have, in so many ways.
The one line that keeps jumping out at me from this Sunday’s Gospel is the one that can almost seem like a throw-away line, an extra detail that adds to the parable but isn’t the main focus: “While everyone was asleep, the enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and then went off.”
And yet, I wonder if that really is the main point Jesus is trying to make; the message he is crying out from the Cross: Wake up. Stop sleep-walking through life. Don’t let Satan win.
Because guess what: Evil seems to be having a field day. If we were honest with ourselves, we must admit it’s true.
He has been busy sowing weeds of hatred in our nation’s political life. He has been sowing seeds of division within our beloved Church. And we all know that Evil is doing its utmost to plant crops of ugliness right within our own hearts and lives.
Satan wants us to be at war with others and within ourselves. That’s how he wins, and how his army of weeds invade our fields.
And Jesus who knows these battlefields upon which we fight is reminding us time and time again: don’t let the weeds win.
Yes, this side of heaven, there will be moments when the weeds will seem to be choking out the crop of wheat that was carefully sown by the Master Farmer.
But, listen: if we are awake to what’s happening, Jesus tells us, then the weeds won’t win. Fight back.
And we, watching the fields seemingly become overrun with thorns that choke out light and grace, ask the question: how? How do I arouse my heart to fight back?
Some suggestions:
First, know your enemy. Satan knows how to get us, and he will stop at nothing to bring down our Church, our nation, our souls. He wants to see us hate, not forgive. He wants us to destroy others with our judgmental words and selfish actions. He wants us to be so busy claiming that we are right and living in our own little bubble of righteousness, that we forget to see that those who may not think like us or act like us are really lost and seeking the Truth of God.
And Jesus would challenge us: how are you listening to the seekers and the lost among you? Are your words and actions tempered by mercy and compassion? Are you willing to enter the brokenness and messiness of others to help them find the God of Truth and Love that they often don’t even realize they seek?
So yes, be awake to the ways in which the enemy tries to sow the seeds of division among us. Archbishop Fulton Sheen and C.S. Lewis would always remind their respective audience: Satan’s greatest trick is to make us think that he doesn’t exist, and then he gets about his work of making us turn against one another in a variety of ways.
Which leads to method number two of staying awake to the weeds of Satan: if we desire to see our Church, our nation and our relationships with others stay firmly rooted in the ways of God, then we have to do the hard work of making sure the wheat of our own lives is cultivated.
And Jesus asks: What are you doing to care for the crop of your own faith life? Are you praying daily? Spending time in the Word? Receiving the Sacraments worthily?
Returning to the two young persons who came to talk with me the other day about their journeys of faith, both made very profound observations about where they had been in their earlier lives: “I was distracted by so many other things,” they said, “I never took time for God in the way I should.”
Therein lies the heart of the battle four our own souls: Don’t let the weeds of distraction keep you from a genuine relationship with Jesus Christ. Don’t let cell phones, hours of mindless entertainment, and pornography pull you away from the Gospel. Don’t let travel sports leagues and vacations keep you from the worship that God rightly deserves in the Sacrifice of the Mass. Never let the world tell you that Church is pointless and Catholicism full of hypocrites.
All of these things are weeds of distraction, and that’s ultimately how the enemy conquers.
What matters is a genuine relationship with Jesus Christ. What matters is doing our best every day to cultivate the wheat in our hearts and souls that He has asked us to grow. God, the Master Sower, will take care of the weeds. Don’t let them become a distraction to your walk of faith. That’s what Satan wants: to use the weeds to say: “why bother?” … or “where is a loving God in all of this?”
Shut out those weeds. Rather, put on the armor of Christ – in prayer and Word and Eucharist. Let these gifts be the ways in which we fight back against the enemy who sows division and distraction. Let us do whatever we need to in order to cultivate the power of the Spirit and the indwelling of grace. Stay awake!