Is God real? If so, why is there so much evil in the world? How do we know our God exists? Why does God only hear you sometimes? What is going on with the tabernacle and the bread? How do I actually talk to God? These are some of the questions our Confirmation students asked in class one day. These questions can seem like obstacles to faith, when in truth they are often the first footprints leading toward it. A heart that asks such things is not necessarily far from God; rather, it is a heart that seeks. 

Among Christ’s most surprising stories is the parable of the wheat and the weeds in today’s Gospel passage. A farmer sows good seed, but in the darkness an enemy scatters weeds among the wheat. The servants are eager to tear the weeds out at once, yet the master restrains them. “Let both grow together until the harvest.” At first this seems almost careless. Why would a good master tolerate weeds? But Christ is teaching us something astonishing: God permits evil, not because He delights in it, but because His wisdom is so great that He can draw from it a harvest more glorious than we can presently imagine.

We long for a world where God would uproot every evil before breakfast. Yet if He did, we might discover that many of the roots are tangled with our own. Patience is one of God’s greatest mercies. The same sunlight that nourishes the wheat also gives the weeds one final opportunity to become something else. God’s delay is not indifference; it is mercy reaching as far as it can before justice finally arrives.

Sometimes His greatest answer is not to change our circumstances, but to change us. Silence is not proof that heaven is empty. Often it is the quiet in which roots grow deepest.

In the end, Christianity does not merely explain evil; it proclaims that evil does not have the final word. The Cross itself appeared to be the greatest triumph of darkness, yet from that single Friday came the salvation of the world. If God could make mankind’s worst crime the doorway to eternal life, then there is no sorrow, no question, no wound He cannot weave into His final harvest. One day, when the wheat is gathered into His barn, we shall discover that not one tear entrusted to Christ was ever wasted.