I just finished boiling, cutting and freezing 60 ears of corn.  It’s not a bad job, not exactly fun but come winter the taste of fresh picked and quickly frozen sweet corn is a taste everyone in my family loves.  Illinois is the land of corn.  You see it stretching for miles along with soybeans.  This year the field behind the house is soybeans so my view is great.  Most often it’s been corn and I get this big green wall until fall.  Watching the ears grow is just such an interesting thing.

Does the corn hear?  Why do we call the corn ears?  Jesus ends his explanation of the parables in today’s Gospel with the words “Whoever has ears ought to hear.”  (Matthew 13:36-43). He was speaking to his disciples who asked him to explain this teaching. He knows, as the second person of the Trinity, what mankind will do in the years ahead.  He knows the end of the story.

I think he’s telling us our own story, and since we have ears, Jesus is telling us it’s time to listen.  One day there will come a harvest of good seed from the weed.  Put another way, those who follow him and those who don’t.  You can’t just be good, you have to give him your life – because it’s his to start with anyway.  It’s a choice though because choice is love extended to the free will of the chooser.  Choosing creates a method for us to realize there is good, and not so good.  Right, and wrong.  Better or best.  Choosing God isn’t a one way, arrogant viewpoint.  As a Catholic, we believe it is in God’s truth that real truth begins and ends.  Not mine, my ancestors, this group or that one, this society, community, country or culture.  He is the way, the truth and the life.  If we don’t think so, we are believing we are God, and guys, we aren’t.  At the end of times, I’ve no doubt there will only be two choices; heaven or hell. Good versus …. not so good… or bad ….. okay, evil.  It’s a hard word but how else can you describe the opposite of good in which casts one down into a fiery furnace except the word evil?  Ouch.

My ears are often open only to my own needs, desires and pleasures.  But where is that rooted from, and where do I think it will go in the long run?  Jesus truly is telling us; this is it guys, open your ears to hear my message. It’s been sitting there for over 2000 years and it’s still true.  It’s this simple.  What are you going to do that will determine where you will go, when the time comes that my Father calls in the Angels for a harvest?   I ponder how I look from God’s viewpoint… does he see me as a good seed or a weed?  Lord, help me to be honest in looking at how my life honors you, or not.  Help me let your will be done, your power be my strength, your love shine forth through my words and actions towards others.  I pray for our world, that we turn towards you, the only way, truth and life.