A Homily for the Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany

​+ In the face of contemporary positivistic rhetoric about increasing inclusivity, dialogue, diversity, consultation and openness in the Church, the Word of God addressed to us in the Sacred Liturgy this morning confronts us with the stark realities of good and evil, of final reckoning and judgement. One can hardly imagine the proponents of so-called synodality speaking of “enemies” as does this morning’s Gospel—the language would be considered too negative—but the fact is that the Word of God does. “An enemy has done this,” we are told of the weeds sown amongst the wheat.

At matins this morning Saint Augustine, preaching on this Gospel passage, taught us that “when those placed at the head of the Church acted too negligently…the devil came and sowed in seed those whom the Lord had termed ‘wicked children’”—that is, heretics—people who obstinately deny the truths of the Catholic faith, amidst the good wheat of faithful Catholics. Saint Augustine should know something about this because for a time he himself espoused the Manichean heresy!
 
And of course, St Augustine is right. When shepherds, rather than tending their flock and teaching them the sound and saving doctrine of Christ and watching over them lest the wolves attack, invest their energies in rhetoric and self-serving discussion at round tables, the eternal enemy—the devil—can and will march through untended gates and sow whatever evil he can. He no longer has need of a Trojan horse: he may ride in triumphantly, secure in the knowledge that the shepherds are absent, absorbed in affairs that are not their primary God-given duty.
 
“An enemy has done this.” These words remind us that Christ and His Church are opposed on many fronts, and above all by the Eternal Enemy, the devil. We are fools to forget this. We are irresponsible to ignore it. For the essence of Christianity, the very reason that Our Lord became man and suffered and died was definitively to conquer sin and evil so that eternally we might share in that triumph and in the glory of His resurrection from the dead. Salvation and perdition are realities. Heaven or hell is our eternal destination. Christ saves and promises eternal life. The Eternal Enemy—the devil—seeks to deprive us of Christ’s salvation and corrupt the grace of Baptism we have received by leaving us damned in the downward spiral of seeking only our own self-serving will.
 
Certainly, the Church’s pastors, most particularly the Successors of the Apostles, must be ever watchful to protect their flocks against the heresies and ideologies of our day that grow up all too frequently. So too, the lay faithful and even the lower clergy and monks and religious have the right and duty to protest their emergence, even more so when those placed at the head of the Church are negligent. Evil is evil and it must be identified for what it is. It must be excluded. The door must be firmly closed in its face. Having the devil sitting at a table does not contribute to the development of legitimate diversity, for dialoguing with the devil is already to do his work. We must prevent the Enemy’s empty works and refute his false promises, not embrace him.
 
Our monasteries, our families, our parishes, our homes, our schools and our businesses must all be safe places wherein the good seed sown in our souls in Baptism, strengthened by Confirmation, nurtured by the worthy reception of Holy Communion and augmented by the Sacraments of Matrimony or Holy Orders and graced by monastic or religious profession, can grow to maturity and bear much fruit safe from the attacks of the Enemy. Those responsible for these fields must watch over them carefully lest they become infested by diabolic weeds. 
 
So, too, we must be on our guard personally. The weeds of vice are all too quick to take root and grow in our own souls whenever we leave them untended. How many lives are ruined, how many souls are lost to the fires of hell because a small vice once took root and grew to dominate and destroy everything else? Let us thwart the Enemy by regularly examining our consciences, by having frequent recourse to the cleansing mercy of the Sacrament of Confession. Let us not hesitate to admit our sins, for such humility unlocks the chains by which the devil seeks to bind us. Forgiveness and healing are available if we but ask—but we must first recognise our need for them.
 
The Gospel teaches us that at times Almighty God tolerates the weeds sewn by the enemy to grow amongst the wheat lest some of the harvest be endangered by rooting them out. We know only too well that the world and even the Church is a mixture of good and evil, and we must tolerate and suffer this at times. But the Gospel also teaches us that the time of harvest shall come. And on that day the rule will be: “Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn,” the Word of God informs us.
 
Good and evil, judgement, and an eternity in heaven or in hell are realities. Our moral choices today and tomorrow will determine where we find ourselves in respect of them. If our past moral choices have been evil, let us repent and do penance whilst there is still time so to do. And, as we now participate anew in the Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross renewed at this altar, let us seek with ever greater fervour the grace necessary to persevere in the life of virtue, and to be ever ready and able to resist the Enemy in no matter what disguise he confronts us. +