Today’s readings: Wisdom 12,13.16-19; Romans 8,26-27; Matthew 13,24-30

Today’s gospel parable speaks realistically of a world which is no heaven on earth, where evil exists and evildoers thrive, where the good and the bad grow together undisturbed. It also speaks of harvest time, a secular version of judgement day.

There was a time when religion was the overall measure of conduct individually and collectively. Believing God to be mighty and powerful, made us think of Him as intolerant of our imperfections and extremely demanding. It instilled in us a sense of fear of God, an awareness to be accountable in whatever we do and how we do it.

For believers and non-believers alike, accountability remains a governing principle in life and in society at large. The problem is when we want to make believe that we staunchly believe in God, but what transpires by and large is that we live as if there is no God. This is our dilemma at this point in our history as a nation.

For too long now we have been breathlessly observing scenarios in our politics and institutions where the ‘darnel’ seems to persistently prevail over the ‘wheat’. Without sounding too tragic, I believe we have touched the bottom. When a person touches the bottom in his or her life, we normally speak of the need for rehabilitation. This is what is called for now, particularly for our political class, which is there to govern us but that leaves much to be desired.

No institution has come out with a clean bill of health in these last years. We seem to have lost the measure of honesty, integrity and accountability that ensure the healthy and democratic running of a nation and that guarantee social cohesion. In such circumstances, religion easily becomes the proverbial pie in the sky, an illusion of something that remains on the margins of life but fails to impact the processes that shape our political, economic and social life.

The world will always be the field depicted in today’s parable where darnel and wheat are meant to grow side by side. That is also what human nature is like. In this context, religion is relevant only if it uncovers skeletons we tend to hide in our closets. Otherwise it only serves as a cover-up and a fake façade.

In the puzzle we are living as a country, we see no sense of ‘harvest time’, and the general feeling is that we have lost touch with what once were the criteria for right conduct and virtue. The blinkers of politics, especially in the grossly partisan party-owned media, do not help. This is made worse by the charlatan Facebook and online posts that continue to repeat ad nauseam the same mantras for whoever follows them.

We may boast as much as we want about a prosperous and promising economy. But ignoring the need of virtuous safeguards will bring our downfall as a society bankrupt of any values and virtues that give us personality as individuals and as a nation. The issue here is not that society has lost its religion but that it has lost its soul.

We seem to be living in total amnesia of what ultimately can safeguard our nation’s soul. Today’s reading from Wisdom says that the God we believe in is a patient God, a God who “after sin, will grant repentance”. Repentance can only be granted on condition that we come back to our senses, that we acknowledge what brought us to the present confusion, and that we recover the capacity to discern between darnel and wheat, between the junk food that is debilitating our soul and body, and the good food that nourishes.