Church of Saint Anne - Fair Lawn NJ issued the following announcement on July 19

In this weekend’s Gospel, Jesus gives us a parable that also teaches us about some seeds. As we know, seeds come in all varieties such as flower seeds, vegetable seeds, heirloom seeds, garden and plant seeds. Some seeds we plant and some seeds we eat, such as sunflower seeds, poppy seeds and pumpkin seeds. Here in the United States, through the U.S. Department of Agriculture, we currently have 20 seed gene banks that preserve and protect hundreds of thousands of major crop seeds, vital to the future of U.S. agriculture. By now I would suppose that many of us have already planted our more common vegetable seeds and are seeing our tomato, cucumber, pepper and bean plants emerging from the good soil. As Jesus also points out in his parable, we have to be on the outlook for those weeds which can play havoc to our vegetable plants. Effective weed control is key to growing healthy garden plants as we know.

Jesus’ parable in this weekend’s Gospel is referred to as the parable of the weeds among the wheat. It’s plain and simple message is that there does exist evil in the world. For centuries we have been asking the age old question: Why does God permit evil in the world? We ask the common question of today: Why is there violence and hatred in our society? Even the great theologian and intellect St. Augustine asked this question and tried to find an equitable answer. Eventually, he realized that evil is a product of humankind’s frailty, as well as sinfulness and the only solution was to rise above it by believing in God, trusting in Jesus and (as we pray in the ‘Our Father’ prayer) ask the Father to deliver us from all evil.

Jesus also assures us that in the end evil will be destroyed, especially the greatest evil that we know of which is death, why because Jesus has already won the victory over evil through his Resurrection.

So my friends, let us get back to our gardening, not in the traditional sense, but as believers who are given the task of weeding out the evil around us by growing the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth by participating in small acts of faith and kindness that will succeed in effectively controlling and choking out the evil weeds of our society.

Original source can be found here.