Cockle In The Wheat

With President Trump’s warp-speed draining of the Washington Swamp these past few weeks, you’d think we would finally be finding some peace and happiness in the state of the Union.  Everyday, we turn on the TV to find not one or two, but literally dozens of new and sensible policies being enacted, thousands of murderous gang members and criminals being deported, the nonsensical and unnatural vices of transgenderism being eradicated, and the divisive practices of DEI being forced to surrender their hold over the culture, prosperity and efficiency of our nation.  So what’s the problem now?  In the midst of so much good news, why do we still have that nagging twinge of malaise?  Why can’t we just relax and enjoy our newfound stability in the world around us?

As we have mentioned many times before, the political scene is the lesser half of the big picture comprised of Church and State.  So while this lesser half of the equation is throwing off the chains of wokism, hopefully forever, our beloved Holy Mother the Church still wallows in the globalistic debauchery and demon-worship of Rome, helped along by the likes of Cardinal Burke, Archbishop Schneider, Michael Matt, Taylor Marshall.  These predominately good Catholics are still bound by their chains of misplaced loyalty to the Devil Incarnate who wants nothing more than to destroy them.  Such blindness strikes our consciousness every now and again with a wake-up call that reminds us that no matter how well goes the world, the real world of God remains entrenched in a battle to the death.

The answer to our conflicted emotions can lie only in resignation to the Divine Will of God, to the Divine Providence who watches over our souls and keeps them safe for as long as we remain close to him.  It was our blessed Saviour himself who gave us the parable of the wheat and the cockle, where our enemy the Devil sows bad grain among the good, and both grow together until the harvest.  We stand in that field of grain, looking around us first at the wheat and then at the cockle, enjoying the one and worrying about the other.  And it is here that we make our mistake.  For as we gaze around at the entwined stalks of good and evil growing together, we fail to recognize that we are one of them.  Our role in this field of grain is not to be the farmer.  Our blessed Lord is the farmer.  Nor are we the reapers who will gather up this harvest and separate the wheat from the chaff.  That is the job of the holy Angels.  Our position is simply to seek our place with the good wheat, preparing ourselves for the harvest, making sure that when the reaper comes for us, it will not be to bind us in bundles to be burnt, but to gather us into God’s celestial barn.

Whether we succeed or not is always a question in our minds.  Can we be assured of salvation?  Yes, but only if we have learned to resist every temptation, avoid every near occasion of sin, and overcome every imperfection of our fallen human nature.  How many of us can claim to have done that?  In short, our daily feelings of anxiety are normal and a good sign that we recognize our faults and are striving to do better.  Let’s all continue to pray for the world, our nation and our neighbor, but above all let’s pray for our own souls, that as they grow in God’s field of grain, they may be counted amongst the wheat and not the cockle.