Fr. Paul D. Scalia: Sharing in God’s Patience

Perhaps one of the most difficult teachings of the Church is about herself – that the Church is holy. How can that be? We know her history well enough to know about all kinds of unholiness in the Church. More importantly and most immediately, we know that we ourselves – members of the Church – are beset by sin. Still, in our Creeds we confess that the Church is holy. Today’s parable of the wheat and the tares (Matthew 13:24-43) might shed some light on this doctrine.

The parable describes something that happened often enough in the ancient world that there were specific laws against it. A man would sow tares or cockle in his enemy’s wheat field. That weed would grow along with the wheat and would look exactly like it. If not filtered out, it would be harvested with the wheat, make its way into the bread, and poison the consumers, sometimes fatally. …