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Zen for the Internet Age:

To see a man’s true face, look to the�photos he hasn’t posted.

Lord, I’ve done the best I can.”

During the days of the Second Vatican Council, Pope St. John XXIII used to submit all his anxieties to God with this prayer every night: “Lord, Jesus, I’m going to bed. It’s your Church. Take care of it!” He understood very well Jesus’ advice in today’s Gospel: “Come to Me, all who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11: 28).

Weeding-out

There were people in Our Lord’s time who wanted him to separate the bad from the good. Among them were people who claimed the moral high ground - the Pharisees. Even John the Baptist expected Jesus to separate the cream from the skum, to have only holy people around him. That’s precisely what Our Lord didn’t do. He had all sorts of people around him, a rainbow coalition of people, the learned, the ignorant, the good-living, the bad-living, tax-collectors, prostitutes, the lot. What in God’s name is he doing, they said. Why doesn’t he get down to business? Why doesn’t he weed them out?

As any gardener knows, weeding can be the greatest threat of all to the life of the young seedling. At first, the problem is one of identifying which is which. The weeds must be left until the seedling can be clearly recognised. Even then, removing the weeds may pose an even greater threat. It might sever the seedling’s root system. Often the weed brings the seedling away with it.

In the case of human beings it is an even more risky business. “Weeding-out” has no history of success which doesn’t seem to curb people’s passion for it. Seventy years after Hitler’s final solution, the horrendous weeding out of six million Jews in concentration camps. Race, religion, colour, sex, politics are still considered ready-reckoners for identifying society’s weeds. Increasing power over nature provides new and sinister instruments for weeding out. The handicapped are institutionalised, the delinquent are penalised, the deviant are ostracised and the poor are patronised.

Weeding out is not confined to faceless bureaucracy. We’re all tempted to try our hand at it. We are sharp at spotting the undesirables, the troublemakers, the misfits. One shudders to think of the people who might have been weeded out if God had not chosen to intervene. Probably most of the saints in the calendar. Peter, after his triple denial in the crucifixion crisis should have been weeded out for failing the leadership test.

The parable of the weeds is starkly simple and yet widely ignored. To the question “Do you want us to go and weed it out?” the answer of Jesus is a categorical “No.” And the reason is self-evident. Only God has eyes sufficiently discerning and fingers sufficiently gentle for this job. Weeding out is God’s prerogative. Life would be so much better for everybody, if only we would leave it to him.