Matthew 13:24-30

 The Parable of the Weeds-Matthew 13:24-30 

No wonder so many want to claim Augustine as their own. 

Beautifully reasoned. Soundly Biblical yet coming from a Catholic priest and bishop. When you take up and read, do so carefully, paying attention to important details…

Not that I am all that, but I finally started to read St. Augustine as he is -a Catholic-the capital C, Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church kind.That made a huge difference. Then I entered the capital C Church myself. 

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There are those who, though called believers, are not so. There are believers in whom the sacraments of Christ are subjected to abuse; persons who live in such a way that they themselves perish, and they ruin others. They themselves perish by evil living; they destroy others, however, by giving the example of evil living. Do not wish, my dearly beloved, to be associated with such as these. Seek the good; cleave to the good; be good.

Do not be surprised at the large number of bad Christians who fill the church, who communicate at the altar…They can exist along with us in the Church of this time, but they will not be able to remain in that assembly of saints which will be after the resurrection. For the Church of this time, since it has good mixed with bad, is compared to a threshing floor where grain is mixed with chaff; but, after the judgment, it will have all good members without the evil. This threshing floor contains the harvest sown by the Apostles, watered by subsequent good teachers down to the present times, somewhat bruised by the persecution of enemies, but with the remnant not yet purged by the final sifting. Nevertheless, He will come concerning whom you recited in the Creed: ‘Then He will come to judge the living and the dead,’ and, as the Gosel says: ‘His winnowing fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly clean out his threshing floor, and will gather his wheat into the barn; but the chaff he will burn up with unquenchable fire.’

Let the old faithful members hear what I say; let him who is the grain rejoice in the tossing; let him remain; let him not depart from the threshing floor. Let him not, following his own judgment, try to free himself from the chaff, since he will not be able to remain on the threshing floor if he wishes to separate himself now from the chaff. Furthermore, when He comes who distinguishes without error, He will not raise to the granary what He has not found on the threshing floor. Whatever grains have now withdrawn from the threshing floor will then boast in vain about their stock. The barn will be filled and closed. Fire will consume whatever has remained outside. Therefore, my dear brethren, let him who is good put up with the evil; let him who is bad imitate the good. On this threshing floor, in truth, grain can degenerate into chaff; and, on the other hand, grain can be restored from chaff. These changes take place daily, my brethren. This life is full of punishments and consolations. Daily those who seemed good do wrong and perish; and again, those who seemed evil are converted and live. For, ‘God does not will the death of the sinner, but only that he be converted from his ways and live.’

Hear me, O grains of wheat; hear me, you who conform to my desires; hear me, O grain. Do not be saddened by the intermixture of chaff; the evil will not be with you forever. To how great an extent does the chaff press upon you? Thank God that it is not heavy. Only let us remain the wheat; then, how abundant soever the chaff may be, it will not oppress us.”

St. Augustine, “Sermon 223: On the Vigil of Easter”

More on Mary - some random thoughts, FWIW

I don’t want to exaggerate Calvin’s contribution to the women’s liberation movement, but he did in effect seek to liberate the Mother of God from what he believed to be idolatrous worship of Mary. Read his commentary on John 2:1-11. 

He still held a high view of Mary’s piety and godliness, but rejected key Marian doctrines of the Church. 

One of the things that started to bother me about Evangelicalism and even more so about Calvinism is that there was no coherent theology and philosophy of femininity and motherhood. Only a kind of legalistic framework. Mary is pretty much erased from people’s memory. Yeah, that might be exaggerated, but I’m not sure. I think that the incoherence in gender theology and philosophy that I was seeing might have something to do with this Protestant confusion about who Mary, the Mother of God is. 

[Some questions that I couldn’t answer adequately when I was an Evangelical:

           Who is Mary? 

           What IS a woman?

           What IS a mother?

           There is a lot of talk about what women should be doing, but why?] 

Is it a stretch to say that feminism can trace it’s founding to Calvin? Probably a stretch, but I wonder... 

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Complementarity, patriarchy, mutuality. Those three battle it out in Evangelicalism. Where is the coherence, the balance? There is no referee, only strong opinions. 

What’s missing? For me it was the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God and matriarchy. 

Patriarchy has male headship. 

Complementarity has male leadership and female submission, even mutual submission. 

Mutuality has complementarity in a way, but there was something I could never quite figure out. There was a lot of talk about androgyny...and I was doxed, ...and my personal life invaded. That was years ago...

Then I read the Eastern Orthodox Church Father, St. John Chrysostom. He had all of it, except the androgyny part that many of today’s egalitarians love to talk about to somehow support their gender idealogy.

Chrysostom didn’t shy away from the great themes of Patriarchy. Matriarchy. Complementarity. and Mutuality. 

Read the little book On Marriage and Family Life - which is a collection of his homilies on the subject. Marriage isn’t either this or that. It is both and. Equilibrium. Both complementarity and mutuality. Both Patriarchy and Matriarchy. Male and female relationships reflect those natural ways of interacting. 

That’s one aspect of Orthodox Christianity that I like. They don’t run from paradox. They seek equilibrium. Both complementarity and mutuality can be true. Patriarchy includs matriarchy. They are not mutually exclusive. The roles are not reversed or blended or denied.  Honor your father and your mother. Your father is not your mother and your mother is not your father. The father is head of the family. The mother is in the yoke with him, beside him, working together towards a common goal. Mutual respect. Not the same or interchangeable. Equal doesn’t mean same. Hierarchy in God’s economy doesn’t mean oppression.  

Egalitarians emphasize mutuality almost exclusively as far as I can tell. I’m sure I’m wrong, but I spent a LOT of time trying to figure out where they were coming from. I tried to understand, and I have the wounds to prove it. 

Egalitarianism can’t mean that there is no hierarchy at all even though they claim to not be hierarchical. It didn’t make sense to me. I was told that I was following Satan. That has something to do with male dominance being a result of the Fall and part of Satan’s plan for the human race. Absolute equality is what God intended. Anyone promoting traditional male-female roles is evidently following Satan. 

Yet the egalitarians want to be leaders, so it’s not really about equality.  I wasn’t woke. I have no desire to be. None whatsoever. My brain has recovered from trying to understand egalitarianism. Nothing works the way they say it does - not even their own relationships.

In any musical group, for example, there has to be a hierarchy. That goes for a symphony orchestra, a choir, or even a rock band. Otherwise there is cacophony as each musician tries to exert his or her dominance over the group. If the leader gets too heavy handed, then the group breaks up. If the leader doesn’t actually lead, then chaos is the result. Sure. It’s not gender based, but it’s not marriage or the Church either. 

Anyway...etc...

No hard feelings. 

Felix culpa...

St. Irenaeus - New Testament Canon

I have an app called Universalis. It’s a great resource. Today there was a reading about St. Irenaeus who lived in the 2nd Century AD. 

He was a disciple of St. Polycarp who was a disciple of the St. John the Evangelist. 

His greatest contribution to the Church was his apologetic work against gnostic heresies.  He was recently declared to be a Doctor of the Church. You can read more about that at the Simply Catholic website. 

He also helped in settling the arguments about what writings belonged in the New Testament canon. 

He is venerated in the following Christian Churches. Note that there are Protestant groups that venerate saints. Say what? 

Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Catholicism

Assyrian Church of the East

Eastern Orthodox Church
Lutheran Church
Oriental Orthodox Church
Anglican Communion

Second Reading: St Irenaeus (130 - 202)

Irenaeus was born in Smyrna, in Asia Minor (now Izmir in Turkey) and emigrated to Lyons, in France, where he eventually became the bishop. It is not known for certain whether he was martyred or died a natural death.

Whenever we take up a Bible we touch Irenaeus’s work, for he played a decisive role in fixing the canon of the New Testament. It is easy for people nowadays to think of Scripture – and the New Testament in particular – as the basis of the Church, but harder to remember that it was the Church itself that had to agree, early on, about what was scriptural and what was not. Before Irenaeus, there was vague general agreement on what scripture was, but a system based on this kind of common consent was too weak. As dissensions and heresies arose, reference to scripture was the obvious way of trying to settle what the truth really was, but in the absence of an agreed canon of scripture it was all too easy to attack one’s opponent’s arguments by saying that his texts were corrupt or unscriptural; and easy, too, to do a little fine-tuning of texts on one’s own behalf. Irenaeus not only established a canon which is almost identical to our present one, but also gave reasoned arguments for each inclusion and exclusion.

Irenaeus also wrote a major work, Against the Heresies, which in the course of denying what the Christian faith is not, effectively asserts what it is. The majority of this work was lost for many centuries and only rediscovered in a monastery on Mount Athos in 1842. Many passages from it are used in the Office of Readings.

Mary crushing the head of the serpent

Of course, Mary crushing the Serpent’s head didn’t end when she bore the Son of God as her Son. Because she is alive in Heaven she can and does advocate for all her children, all those who believe in Jesus Christ - Son of God, Son of Man.

Think of how a mother protects her children, even being willing to give her life for them. People often talk about this or that mother being like a mother bear. She will fight for her children. Now look at the image of Mary crushing the serpent’s head. It starts to make more sense. 

We have a Mother on our side if we ask her for help. In fact, she is often there for her children even when they don’t know it or believe that she has that grace.  

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Every time a person says no to God he or she is saying yes to Satan. 

Every time a person says yes to God, he or she is saying no to Satan. 

Eve said yes to Satan and her decision gave him the advantage over the rest of the human race. Satan thought he won, that God’s plan for the human race was defeated from the start. 

However, Satan did not count on the Woman whose yes reversed Eve’s no. How so? By bearing the One who defeated sin, death, hell, Satan, and all forms of evil. 

How does a believer defeat Satan, stomping on his head? By saying yes to God and no to sin. 

How do we do this? By God’s grace, as did the kecharitōmenē, - the one already fully graced at the moment of her conception by God’s sovereign act. 

Mary defeated Satan by God’s grace. 

By God’s grace in Christ, so do we. 

The image of Mary stomping on the dragon should fill us with hope. What God did for and through her, He can do for me as I stomp on the dragons in my own life through the power of Christ in me, the hope of glory. 

There’s also the element of being saved through the child bearing..., but that’s another related subject as to why Satan doesn’t want women to have children.

Those are just some thoughts on the subject of Mary’s crushing of the head of the serpent, Satan. It needs more development, but I think I’m on the right track. 

Most Protestants do not pray the Rosary or ask the Saints in glory to pray for them. I do. The Saints are willing to help us and to encourage us along the way - as Hebrews 12:1,2 indicate. They are in the stands, cheering us on which means they are alive and want us to succeed in our race as we keep our eyes on Jesus. 

Hebrews 12

English Standard Version

Jesus, Founder and Perfecter of Our Faith

12 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

And Scripture talks about the prayers of the Saints. Yes. Protestants insist that this cannot mean that those Christians who are now in God’s presence are praying for those of us who are still in the race down here on earth. May I say that the Protestant view is a man made, dogmatic interpretation and not necessary at all. 

The Church recognizes specific men and women who are Saints in heaven. The Church also recognizes that there are many more Saints in Heaven that are not recognized officially. 

Revelation 5:8

English Standard Version

 

8 And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.

 

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Yes, if God had not intervened by His grace in her life, Mary would not have been able to live a sinless life. She would have inherited original sin from Adam just like everyone.  However, God did intervene and saved her completely at the moment she was conceived in the womb. 

Mary’s sinlessness was not an issue for Martin Luther. It was Calvin who changed the doctrine to make Mary a sinner who had inherited a fallen nature and was an active sinner like everyone else except Christ. Most Protestants have continued with his error. Calvin cherry picked Augustine, yet claimed to be Augustinian - only if he got to control what was true and what was false. That is a problem prevalent in Protestantism. Everyone claims his or her own authority as binding. 

 

Protestants don’t have to reject the doctrine of Mary’s sinless life. Not all do, in fact. I guess Martin Luther didn’t get the dogma of the Immaculate Conception exactly right, but he was close. It’s clear from the following statement what he did believe. He was a Catholic priest after all. 

 

Luther’s words follow:

It is a sweet and pious belief that the infusion of Mary’s soul was effected without original sin; so that in the very infusion of her soul she was also purified from original sin and adorned with God’s gifts, receiving a pure soul infused by God; thus from the first moment she began to live she was free from all sin.

(Sermon: “On the Day of the Conception of the Mother of God,” December [?] 1527; from Hartmann Grisar, S.J., from the German Werke, Erlangen, 1826-1868, edited by J.G. Plochmann and J.A. Irmischer,

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Here is the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in a short statement. Sure. Not all Christians believe this, but no Christian should be scandalized by it, especially those who hold to a monergistic view of salvation. What God wills, He does. 

In fact, complete sanctification is the goal that God has for all Christians. It’s all of God’s grace working in the lives of believers. Mary is an example of what God wills for all His children eventually - that we be without sin. 

Eastern Orthodox Christians have a different view since evidently they don’t accept St. Augustine’s teaching on original sin. Even so, they believe that Mary, by God’s grace, lived a sinless life. 

491 Through the centuries the Church has become ever more aware that Mary, "full of grace" through God, 134 was redeemed from the moment of her conception. That is what the dogma of the Immaculate Conception confesses, as Pope Pius IX proclaimed in 1854: 
 

The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin. 135 

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