Homily – 16th Sunday – Year – Fr Jerry Browne (National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies #southafrica #Swaziland #Botswana #eswatini)
The world we live in is a bit of a mess! We are surrounded by poverty, corruption, violence, broken relationships, disrespect for human life and deep divisions within society. It’s easy to grow disillusioned and to wonder where God is in all of it. It is equally easy to look for people to blame, to find scapegoats for our anger and disillusionment.
The tendency to judge others comes all too easily to us humans, often fuelled by our own fears and insecurities. As followers of Christ, however, we are called to rise above our baser inclinations and look for a way that truly brings value to the world.
We see this revealed in today’s Gospel (Mt 13:24-43), where Jesus speaks not simply about the world as it is, but about the world as God desires it to be. He describes the Kingdom of God, not as a distant place we enter after death, but as God’s loving plan already breaking into our world right now. The Kingdom is God’s dream for humanity – a world where mercy triumphs over judgement, forgiveness over resentment, truth over deceit, justice over oppression, and love over fear. Whenever God’s will is done and lives are transformed by his grace, the Kingdom is already taking root among us.
To help us understand what the Kingdom looks like, Jesus tells three simple parables: wheat growing among weeds, a tiny mustard seed, and yeast mixed into flour. Each of these parables reveals something different about God’s Kingdom. The first teaches us about God’s patience; the second about the surprising growth of goodness; and the third about the quiet power of grace to transform lives from within.
The wheat and the weeds remind us that life is rarely as simple as we would like it to be. We are quick to divide people into categories: good and bad, faithful and sinful, black and white, us and them. We find it easy to notice the weeds in someone else’s life while remaining blind to what is growing within our own hearts.
The uncomfortable truth is that each of us is a mixture of wheat and weeds. We can be generous and selfish, compassionate and judgemental, faithful and doubtful. None of us is entirely virtuous, nor should any of us be defined by our worst mistakes. That is why the farmer tells his servants not to pull up the weeds too quickly, for in doing so they might uproot the wheat as well. Who among us would want to be condemned for our failures?
The parable reminds us that hasty judgement can wound the innocent, close hearts to conversion, and damage the very people God is still patiently transforming.
At the heart of this parable lies the profound truth that God sees what we cannot see: the wounds people carry, the battles they are fighting and the possibilities for change still hidden within them.
If that’s true, then before we rush to uproot the weeds in another person’s life, Jesus invites us to pause, to recognise the good that remains, and to encourage rather than condemn.
Jesus demonstrated that patience throughout his ministry. He shared a meal with Zacchaeus before Zacchaeus had put his life right. He protected the woman caught in adultery while calling her to a new way of life. And there are many other examples. Jesus never suggested that sin did not matter; he showed that no one should be defined permanently by it.
The mustard seed reminds us that God often begins with what appears insignificant. The Kingdom rarely grows through spectacular moments. More often it grows quietly, one faithful decision at a time: for example, refusing to repeat gossip, offering an apology, welcoming someone who feels excluded, visiting a lonely person, or choosing forgiveness instead of resentment. A small act of love can grow far beyond anything we imagine.
The yeast reminds us that God’s grace works quietly from within. Prayer, Scripture, the Eucharist and daily acts of compassion gradually transform us. We may not always notice the change, but grace can soften our judgements, deepen our patience and enlarge our capacity to love. As St Paul reminds us in today’s second reading (Romans 8:26–27), the Spirit comes to help us in our weakness, even when we struggle to pray or cannot see any progress. The Spirit prays withing us.
These parables do not ask us to ignore injustice or remain silent before wrongdoing. They warn us against allowing the struggle against evil to make us bitter, self-righteous or cruel. We cannot heal division by creating more division.
As we receive the Eucharist today, let us ask God for the humility to recognise the weeds within ourselves, the faith to plant small seeds of goodness, and the openness to allow his grace to transform us from within. The world may be deeply wounded, but God has not abandoned it. He continues to plant seeds of hope, often through ordinary people like us. The question is whether we will allow Him to begin that work in our own hearts.
So this morning as we gather, we take a moment to ask what might these readings be asking of my life today? What is the Spirit asking to change within me. Is there something that I can do differently to help make the world a better place, a world modelled on the vision that God desires for our lives?
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Please consider praying a decade of the rosary on a daily basis for the evangelising Mission of the Church and the Pope’s intentions.
The the pope’s prayer intention for the month of July is for respect for human life.
Let us pray for the respect and protection of human life in all its stages, recognizing it as a gift from God.
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Blessed Pauline Jaricot, Pray for us. 🙏🏼🙏🏼
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