[00:00] My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, there's so much richness in this Gospel teaching and there's an immediacy to it because at every moment we need to be vigilant as our Lord says: "You know not the day nor the hour." We

[00:36] therefore need to consider our own life in view of this teaching, which is the perennial teaching of the Church: the last things. You know, when it comes down to it, if we simplify our priorities to the point of necessity only, these are the only things we really need to concern ourselves with ultimately, which

[01:08] is the last four: our heaven is death—excuse me, we start out with death. Death: we're all going to die. Judgment: we're all going to be judged. And then the second two: it depends—heaven or hell. But ultimately everyone ends up along that path: dies, is judged, and then goes either eternally to life or eternally to

[01:39] death. And so that's what our Lord is talking about—at least that's the undertext, the subtext of this whole teaching of the good wheat and the weeds. The drama of it is lived out in each one of our own lives, in our hearts: that field where we choose whether or not we're going to be wheat or weeds.

[02:20] Ultimately, judgment is according to God's perfect justice, and it's inclined to mercy. God is merciful; He is merciful and just. And that's really, I guess, the primary theme: the compatibility, the perfect unity in God of justice and mercy. And then in the context of the parable of the weeds and wheat, we

[03:01] have to see how does that work for us. God wants us all to be saved, and in theory it is possible for all of us to be saved. But I think it's quite evident from all of Scripture that in the end not all will choose salvation. And that's the real problem that pertains to every single individual: that we have a choice. And one of the great keys to obtaining God's mercy and therefore

[03:40] eternal life is to be just. God wants us to be just and righteous. He gave us so many teachings: the Ten Commandments, the whole teaching of Jesus Christ, where He clarified what the greatest commandment is: "Love God with all your heart, your mind, your soul, and your strength, and your neighbor as yourself." In the prayer that we prayed at the beginning of the Mass we said: "Show favor, O Lord, to Your servants"—hopefully we're all His servants. That's why we exist: to know, to

[04:17] love, and to serve Him. "To Your servants mercifully increase the gifts of Your grace, that made fervent in hope, faith, and charity, they may be ever watchful in keeping Your commands." So this is a prayer that should be in our heart at all times, that we should wake up every day with that prayer in our heart. We need to develop these virtues of faith, hope, and charity. We need to believe

[04:51] these words that our Lord has spoken to all who can hear, all who have ears, right? He doesn't exclude anyone. I don't know—there may be some very rare condition where somebody's born without ears, but it's so rare that I've never seen it, and I probably you haven't either. In other words, God wants us all to be saved, and so we have to have this awareness of the faith. Okay, our Lord has

[05:24] told us there will be a judgment; there will be a separation. We have to have hope that God is merciful. We all sadly know sin; we have all sinned, and probably all of us still struggle with temptation and are inclined by our fallen nature to sin. But we have the hope of God's mercy, and His mercy takes the form then of

[05:55] assistance to not just forgiveness. Once we have sinned and repent—repentance is a necessary component of God's mercy. If we do not repent, we can't receive His mercy. Say God is the sun shining, but if we're hiding under the staircase with the door closed, the sun doesn't reach us. We have to come out and find the sun, and that's what repentance is: turning back to God, conversion. And then we have to

[06:26] have the third of these theological virtues, which is charity: love your neighbor as yourself. "Love one another as I have loved you" is probably more useful of a teaching. "Love your neighbor as yourself" can be somewhat ambiguous because I know people who hate themselves. That's not very good. "Love one another as I have loved you," which means selflessly love one another, seek what is

[07:00] good for the other person. And then as we sang in that song, "All will be sunshine." So brothers and sisters, when we hear this Gospel, the most important thing, first, I think, is to understand the ultimate message: that there is going to be a separation. I mean, as far as a practical point goes, remember that there's going to be a separation. I think probably that may be one of the first

[07:34] things. At a higher level, not so fundamental, is the concern that I think we all have about how things are in the Church, even where there does not seem to be a total unity in the truth or in charity. There's division, and so we might theoretically say, "Well, there are weeds among the wheat, and that's the way it is. We shouldn't even be surprised about it. Our Lord spoke about that two thousand

[08:14] years ago. It's part of the Gospel." The lesson from this clearly is that we have to tolerate those who are unjust and pray for their conversion. That's really the thing. As I said, the field also is in each one of us. Each one of us has a choice. Each one of us has weeds that need to come up. That's the work of purification. But we shouldn't exclude people in our hearts

[08:53] anyway from the hope of eternal life. And that's why we have to practice mercy. You know, God is just; that's why there is this separation at the end. But until that moment He is always offering us His mercy, and we have to practice mercy towards others. That's probably the greatest challenge to our salvation: is to forgive those who hurt us. That's the heart; it's also one of the hardest

[09:25] acts of Christian charity: is to love your enemy, to forgive those who hurt us. But it's also the key to our own receiving God's mercy. It's the key to salvation. It's the key to manifesting the kingdom of heaven on earth—not that it will ever fully manifest, but that's how we build the kingdom.

[09:57] So brothers and sisters, every day let us examine our consciences. Every day let's pray for this grace. You know, I think it was in the second reading that St. Paul assures us: "Thanks be to God that even though we are weak and do not know how to pray, the Spirit prays for us." So even on our forgetful days, the Holy Spirit, if we have that tendency

[10:29] to want to know, to love, and to serve God and to obtain eternal life and happiness, the Spirit is always advocating for us, and we want to depend more and more on the Holy Spirit. That's why we consecrate ourselves to the Immaculate Virgin Mary, the spouse of the Holy Spirit, that she too advocates for us with the spouse, with the Holy Spirit, so that we have that

[11:02] awareness that we never forget: every little thing we do is going to contribute to our final judgment. And though we have to work out our salvation in fear and trembling, we don't have to be neurotic. We do have an underlying hope and confidence in the mercy of God, His assistance that's always there for us. In the end, our worst enemy, our only true enemy, is

[11:35] ourselves—our selfish self, I should say: that clinging to self, that unwillingness to forgive, that unwillingness to let go of self-determination and trust in God. But we have to learn that. We have to become like little children, as our Lord said. And so if you're struggling with these things, look at a child, look at how they are still innocent. Hopefully we pray the spouse of the Holy Spirit to

[12:14] help us remember and be vigilant at all times. And with her help then obtain ultimately heaven. Praise be Jesus and Mary. So

[12:58] you