Fr Paul's Desk
It seems to me that one good thing to come out of the rapidly rising oil prices is that people have become motivated to drive more slowly. By reducing the speed at which they ordinarily drive, they can consume less petrol, save money and so lessen the impact of rising prices. It might also be the case that driving more slowly is less stressful-I find it so- and so healthier for people. It will be interesting to see if the accident rate decreases also.
There are some people who still refuse to possess a mobile phone or use a computer or do so reluctantly and with diffidence. They resist instantaneous communication and the speeding up of life that follows from this. We seem to drive ourselves. The speeding up of life is almost like an irresistible drug. If we are not scheduling our lives by targets and timescales, we feel guilty and lazy.
This is the time of year when people like to chill out, slow down, put the brakes on, go away on holiday and lay on the beach in the sun, if they can find it. For many of us, we are speeding up to the next holiday, that is the horizon we look forward to.
This does not seem to be the way that God works, if we pay attention to the Gospel today. Jesus tells the story, (parable) of the wheat and the darnel. Someone has tried to ruin the growth of wheat by sowing seeds of weed, darnel. When this is discovered by the master and his servants, the latter ask whether they should go and pull out the weeds. The master responds, “No because when you weed out the darnel you might pull up the wheat with it. Let them both grow till the harvest”. At harvest time there can be a separation; the darnel collected and burnt, the wheat gathered into the barns.
Paul says “Love is patient and kind”. God is love. God is patient and kind with us, far more perhaps than we are with ourselves and with one another. Wisdom(12.18) tells us at Mass that God is “mild in judgement and governs us with great lenience”. But there will be at some point a time of judgement, as the parable suggests, but in the meantime conversion in our lives takes time and is a continuing process coming to fruition, even among the weeds.