Translation for the Epistle for the Fifth Sunday After Epiphany resumed.
Brethren: Put ye on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, the bowels of mercy, benignity, humility, modesty, patience: bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if any have a complaint against another: even as the Lord hath forgiven you, so do you also. But above all these things have charity, which is the bond of perfection: and let the peace of Christ rejoice in your hearts, wherein also you are called in one body: and be ye thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you abundantly, in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual canticles, singing in grace in your hearts to God. All whatsoever you do in word or in work, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to God and the Father by Jesus Christ our Lord.
Continuation of the Holy Gospel According to St. Matthew
At that time Jesus spoke this parable to the multitudes: The kingdom of heaven is likened to a man that sowed good seed in his field. But while men were asleep, his enemy came and oversowed cockle among the wheat, and went his way. And when the blade was sprung up and had brought forth fruit, then appeared also the cockle. And the servants of the good man of the house coming, said to him: Sir, didst thou not sow good seed in thy field? Whence then hath it cockle? And he said to them: An enemy hath done this. And the servants said to him: Wilt thou that we go and gather it up? And he said: No, lest perhaps, gathering up the cockle, you root up the wheat also together with it. Suffer both to grow until the harvest, and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers: Gather up first the cockle and bind it into bundles to burn, but the wheat gather ye into my barn.
The Saving Words of the Gospel
In the Name of the Father, of the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Transcription of Sermon
A parable of Our Lord is spoken, it says, to the multitudes, and then if you continue in this Chapter of Matthew, you’ll find that He later explains the meaning of it to his intimate ones in a house, and the Fathers see this as first the Church in the world proclaiming a message, and then the explanation that Our Lord gives to His chosen ones in the intimacy of the Church, and that’s the house that represents then the institution with Christ at the center.
There’s a little difference in this parable in Matthew’s Greek, he always says ὅμοιος (homoios), “the kingdom of heaven is ὅμοιος” (like) and then filled in blanks; a mustard seed, or like a man who bought a field, or a pearl of great price. It’s always ὅμοιος and just means like. In this case, though it’s a bit different, he uses a different construction. And He says ὅμοιωθη (homoiothe) which means it’s made like. In other words, something has happened to it; ὅμοιωθη, there’s something passive. And what does that mean?
Well, it’s really the revelation of Our Lord’s mercy, how the Kingdom of Heaven has allowed itself to become something. And that’s what He’s saying. And what He means is He’s made the field. He’s created the field. He sowed the good seed. But He, in His providential plan, allows for this alteration, which is where we see the devil coming and sowing the bad seed. And so, His providence allows for this.
It’s kind of reminiscent of His own κηνοσις (kenosis), which Paul speaks about in the Letter to the Philippians. His κηνοσις is His own self-emptying, which is the radical humility of God who empties Himself in order to become man, like us in all things except sin. And so, even His kingdom has to undergo a certain self-emptying, suffering a loss, so to say, suffering the interactions of the evil one. And who did it?
He says, well, in His explanation, He says, διαβολλος (diabollos). Διαβολλος is a construction of several Greek words. “Δια” means across, and “βολλος” is to throw. So, one who throws things across, and this is where we get the word “devil”. So διαβολλος; one who throws things across. What is that throwing things across mean? It means one who sows dissension. So, what he tries to do is he tries to weasel his way into holy relationships. We see that already in the first Chapters of Genesis where he works to pry Eve’s dependence on God by sowing doubts about God. “Oh, He didn’t tell you the full story. If He had told you the full story, His secret would be out. No, if you eat of this, you’ll be just like Him.” And so, what the devil does in this throwing across, is he’s trying to throw a wrench in between God and man, in between holy relationships amongst the children of God as well.
This is why he’s also called the father of lies; a slanderer. He slandered God in Genesis Chapter 3:3 by attributing to Him hidden motives. And since his purpose is to foment a lie, and Christ has revealed Himself as the truth, those who are caught up in the lie then have to make a choice. If they don’t give up the lie, they end up hating the truth. Thomas Aquinas speaks about the dynamic. He says it doesn’t happen all at once. He said for those, for example, who hand themselves over to the passion of lust, he says ultimately it ends up in hatred of God because God is the one who prohibits that. And so, they see God as an obstacle, someone to be done away with. And this is also why our Lord says in John’s Gospel, “You cannot bear My words of truth, because you have the devil as your father.” He’s talking to the Jews who want to kill Him. And he says, “You have the devil as your father. And because I tell you the truth, you do not believe Me.”
So, when the devil works on us, he also tries to present a certain obstacle that’s not true between us and our Lord. “You’re so bad you could never be forgiven.” Or perhaps somebody comes back to confession after a long time and the devil is really ticked off that God has won the soul back and he starts sowing the doubt in the man’s mind. “Do you really think you can be good? Who are you trying to fool? You’re beyond help.” And before somebody goes to confession, if they’re considering going to confession, the devil will say, “Well, don’t be scrupulous. Everybody does that.” Once he’s gotten us to accept a part of the lie, our intellect gets compromised because there’s a certain disconnect with the truth.
Our intellect is an ordered faculty, which means it’s ordered towards the truth, just as our will is an ordered faculty, which means it’s ordered towards the good. We’re supposed to have the true and the good as one thing. But when we start to accept the lie, we impose upon ourselves a sort of self-imposed schizophrenia by knowing something is one way and desiring it to be the other. And this is the fruit of that lie. And so, once we’ve given into that, the devil inoculates our being, starting with the mind, and then the passions, and the will bringing us to have an aversion to the truth. And this aversion then, if we let it go, invades our will, our passions, our affectivity, our memory, our imagination, our cognitive power, and ultimately such a soul that is so demonically infected suffers a loss and a moral ill that is far greater than a demonic possession.
It’s infinitely worse to commit a sin than it is to be possessed by a demon. When a demon possesses a person, he acts on the body. He doesn’t possess the soul. When somebody commits a mortal sin, the soul is still in their possession, but it’s under the authority of the evil one. This is why Christ says that the devil was a murderer from the start because his goal is to … since he can’t harm the Almighty, he tries to harm those who are created according to the image and likeness of God. He wants to kill our entire being through this corruption of the lie. And this explains why we see in the Passion Narratives of the four Gospels this demonic hatred and desire to kill Christ because they had given themselves over to the lie. If I embrace a lie and try and call it good, and true, and beautiful, the truth then stands as an accusation. And this is why so many people get so upset when they hear the truth, when they hear the Gospel, when they hear Church teaching, such people have allowed darkness to overcome them when they were made for the light, they were made for the truth.
Notice too how the devil works. He’s a creature, just like any other angel, or a human person, the rocks, the wheat, and the weeds, those are all creatures of God. The devil did not create a field. He had to be… he had to dispose himself of something that God had created. The devil is incapable of creating. What does he do, it says superseminavit, he sowed on top of, he sowed on top of, says Jerome in his Latin Vulgate, and he’s translating this from ἔσπειρεν, this this sowing over, sowing seeds on top of what’s already there, that’s what that really means. In other words, his only relationship is a parasitical relationship. He can’t create anything, so he has to take what is already in existence to try to corrupt that.
And we see this in certain demonic ideologies that are incapable of creating; Marxism, for example. That’s why Pius X said it was impossible for a man to be a Marxist and a Catholic. These are mutually exclusive ideologies. One is rooted in the truth and the other is from hell. But notice too that they’re incapable of creating… outside of gulags. They’re incapable of creating something. They don’t bring anything to existence.
You look at popular culture now. There are almost no new stories. They want to take old ones and vitiate them. They want to put a new spin on what has already been told. Why? Because there is a certain parasitical relationship. There isn’t anything true or good or beautiful there. And what they do is they glam on to what is true, good, and beautiful and try to vitiate that.
St. Augustine tells us that, and Thomas will write a long book, about six hundred pages long, called De Malo, On Evil; that evil has no substance. Evil is a lack of something. So, for example, Thomas will use the example of blindness. Because blindness isn’t a thing, it’s a lack of a thing. It’s a lack of light. It’s a lack of the ability to see. And so, he uses this as an analogy then for what evil is, or better said what evil isn’t, right? It isn’t a thing. It doesn’t have a substance. There isn’t an evil field. There’s only the field that God made.
And human nature in spite of what Protestant theologians will say, is not evil as a result of original sin. Human nature is not evil. It’s damaged; certainly, we can all attest that from our experience but it’s not absolutely corrupt. It’s not irredeemable. The devil claims to have a kingdom, but he really only has a kingdom of negation. The only true kingdom is the kingdom of Christ.
And as our liturgical year approaches the end, last week we saw the limitations of the human person and how ultimately brought to the extremes of our limits, then we see where theological virtue has to take over. Well, today the Church, as the year ends, presents to us another limitation. It’s a certain limitation that’s been imposed on the Kingdom of God. And it’s not a problem for Our Lord. His providence allows for it. In fact, so much so that Thomas will say that God allows for this demonic infiltration for our sanctification because in rebuffing him in overcoming temptations and choosing Christ over a passion we grow in sanctity, and we give Him great glory. And so, the Church wants us to be armed and forewarned so that we can better negotiate our way towards the heavenly homeland.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.
~ Fr. Ermatinger