Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jesus tells the disciples why he will not let the servants pull up the weeds. The wheat and the weeds grew up together and their roots are tangled. Pull one, you damage the other. So the master says: wait. Let them grow together until harvest. The angels will do the separating at the end.

This is harder than it sounds for a household. We want the field sorted now - the bad removed, the good confirmed. But the parable says the sorting is not ours to do. What is ours is to be wheat - to grow, to bear fruit, to endure the mixed field without becoming weeds in the trying. The last image Jesus gives is not the furnace. It is the righteous shining like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.

• For our family in the mixed field, that we would grow as wheat and trust the harvest to the one who sows, we pray to the Lord.
• For those who do not know how to pray, that the Spirit's inexpressible groanings would rise on their behalf, we pray to the Lord.
• In this Precious Blood month, for the Precious Blood of the sower who entered the field himself and was not spared, we pray to the Lord.

Tonight at dinner, ask each child: what is one thing you are hoping for in the new school year? Then pray one Hail Mary for each answer given. August is almost here. Hand the year to Mary before it begins.

The mustard seed is the smallest of seeds and becomes the largest of plants. What you plant in your household this week - a prayer habit, a dinner table question, a feast day observed - may not look like much. Give it time.