19 July 2026 #wheatorweeds
A parishioner saw me leaving work and joked about using my turn signal when leaving the parking lot. My reply was that I am a ‘commuter’ and take the rules of the road seriously. His response? “Even the speed limit rule?” My sheepish response, “Ummmm…. not so much; those are more like guidelines, you know?” And we laughed. But it prompted me to think about the difference between rules and guidelines in our spiritual and faith practices, given today’s readings.
Rules are hard and fast and have direct consequences. They are black-and-white, if-then kind of deals… almost mathematical by nature. It’s the perennial struggle of parenting, yes? Give in just one time and the rule is virtually unenforceable thereafter. Guidelines give freedom of action to meet a common goal and the consequences can be intended or unintended. Guidelines allow for creativity and prudential judgement.
When rules have no direct and immediate consequence, they become guidelines. It’s true that the rules of the road have a set speed limit, put in place by folks who care about safety and are concerned about the common good of a community. But very few people, myself included, follow every single speed limit sign on every single road every single day. Why? Because when we break the rule, there is no hard and fast consequence. Flashing lights and tickets do not appear every time the speed limit is exceeded. The speed limit rule thus becomes a guideline… its goal is still the common good of a community but the speed of the car is up to the freedom of the driver.
Our wisdom reading today is a pondering question on the power of God’s justice. Justice lives uniquely in both the black-and-grey areas of morality. There will be (a) consequences to our actions, (b) leniency, even clemency, in judgement, and (c) permission for repentance. To quote the psalmist, “Lord, you are good and forgiving.” As we want our personal justice to be. We want the Lord to search our heart, as Paul says to the good Christians of Rome, because sometimes, from the outside looking in, our actions do not align with our faith, and therein lies where Jesus lives.
On the one hand, a husband might exceed the speed limit to get his pregnant wife to the hospital or a feverish child to the emergency room. I might exceed the speed limit so as not to disrupt the flow of the early-morning commute traffic. Both of those goals have care for others and safety in mind, and we’ll let the Lord judge the prudence of breaking that rule.
Spiritually speaking, I might miss Mass because I am contagious with illness, work a long double-shift in the ER, or are in a foreign land and cannot find a Catholic Church. That keep-holy-the-Sabbath-day rule is broken for legitimate reasons. I am still the “wheat,” and the “mustard seed” and the “yeast” of Jesus’ parables today.
However. loooong pause here, deep breath. We sometimes take a rule and turn it in to a guideline for our personal convenience or preference or because we think we know better than the Magisterium of the church. We dismiss the Sunday obligation, decline the principles of marriage, decimate protection for the pre-born, dispute proper end-of-life care, or disdain those whose skin-tone differs from ours… We let the enemy rule our hearts and actions and turn rules into guidelines, easily dismissing the if-then consequences because they cannot be seen by anyone but God. Then we are weeds in the wheat of the God’s fields. #wheatorweeds