“O unutterable Love”
St. Catherine of Siena, in her conversation with God the Father, posed a question regarding creation; “Why did you create, you who are so perfect, who lacks and needs nothing?” The Father answers her saying that He creates us out of his overflowing goodness and love. Hence the creation is fundamentally a free gift of God’s loving benevolence. Therefore, God loves and upholds it in being. This is why St. Catherine says that everywhere she looks she feels to say “O unutterable Love that surrounds my soul.”
However despite this reality of goodness and love Jesus in this Sunday’s Gospel reveals a question deep in all our hearts. Father “was it not good seed that you sowed in your field? If so, where does the Darnel come from?” This same question could be rephrased to mean, why is there so many evil acts in the world? Why are innocent people murdered or oppressed? Why is there evil in the first place if the creation is so good and God is a loving God? So often many of these questions baffle us and make us question our faith and the goodness of God.
Jesus anticipates these questions in all our hearts and helps us articulate it through this Gospel. He does not leave us without an answer. It is clear that God did sow good seed and therefore there is indeed goodness in the world. However, Jesus explains that the Devil also sows his seed. In other words, every time for example we choose to hate, to lust, to be greedy, to conspire against others, we allow evil to come into the world, we allow the devil to sow his seed. The devil sows evil when good is absent. Since we are created with freedom of will, we can choose to co-operate with evil and reject grace. Hence, as the old adage says “evil exists when good men do nothing.”
We should never loose sight that though there is evil seed and we ourselves can at times be “subjects” of evil, we can always repent and God’s grace can remove the seeds of vice and plant the seeds of the virtues. The field of our heart can be made anew with a harvest full of fruit to offer the Lord. We ought also to try like St. Catherine to cultivate an awareness of God’s benevolence despite the apparent evil in the world so that we can say with her “ O unutterable Love that surrounds my soul.”
Gospel Reflection for 16th Sunday in Ordinary time- Year A (Mt 13: 24-43)
