Matt 13:24

The last time I wrote a little something - it was about the Parable of the Sower, today we will looked around that, just a bit before and after.

The gospels are very connected. There is a flow - a continuity - through out. We tend to read them and understand them in chapters - isolated parts - and they are not in chapters. Chapters are a devise and divisions created by early translators and as such they lead us to assume what the early translators assumed. Anyone first coming to scriptures should come by way of reading with these divisions but there comes a point when one should realize that these divisions are an aide not included in the originals as such can assist us or hurt us.

Most of the time, when we read the gospels, there is an underlying unity to portions which, on the surface, seem to deal with different subjects. Therefore we can sometimes see that some parables which seem to have little relationship to each other - are actually two ways to express the same thing. It is a little like peering into a diamond by rotating it in your hand and looking into the diamond through several of its cut facets. What we see through each facet - is the same internal fire. This is typical of the gospels in more than just the parables. There is also a typical Jewish was of (what I call) telescoping about scriptures both old and new testaments. That is that the writer will treat the same thing in several ways (an underlying continuity) and then one of the sections will be lifted out - and displayed much fuller. If one is not aware of this than one can run on assuming that the writer has moved to a new subject and be totally unaware that the write is - still - treating the - same subject in a much fuller way.

A prime example of this telescoping takes place in the very first books of the Old Testament. The very first book is really very small… it is the treatment of the seven days of creation. The second book is generally called the Second Creation stoy and the seven days is generally called the First Creation story by translators. Within the events of the seven days the even of the creation of Adam is a small thing that seems to happen on the sixth day “Let us form man in our own image..” and the forming of man goes on for only a few lines followed by the rest on the seventh day. In this way we could say that the forming of man is only one sixth of that book (the sixth day). Yet that event of the sixth day is lifted out - and becomes the second book (which is generally thought of as a second creation story). We are all familiar with it - it is the narration of Adam and Even in the garden. When we read in a continuous way we tend to think that the events of Adam and Eve took place after the seventh day - but according to Hebrew literary style - the narration of Adam and Eve and the garden are first mentioned on the sixth day as a “forming” - and next the writer take the event of that ‘forming’ and telescope right into it. It is as if we stood far off at first and watched thing happen - and among the things that take place - there is one more important than the others and we now zoom in on that event to look at it in much fuller detail. There is always a continuity of symbols when this is done - yet if not understood in the original writer’s language (and how many of us can read the Hebrew?) this - flowering - this closer detail - can be missed. And so it is that we should understand that the events of the Garden should be thought of as being contained in the previous narration of the few linens begun by “Let us form man in our own image.” And we should further come to understand that the ‘second creation story’ is not a ‘second creation’ but rather a fuller, closer, and more detailed look at the most important event that took place on the sixth day. So too the next book (dealing with Cain and able) is a lifting out of the narration of the garden its most important event (the fall, the eating of the apple) and treating the reality of that event anew in a much wider and more detailed way.

So too does Our Lord often speak this way in the gospels. And we should not be surprised, in fact we should expect it - being a Jew of Jews, a Hebrew among Hebrews, an embodiment of scripture (or shall we say that scripture is an embodiment of him) - it would rather be the surprise if Jesus did not follow the continuity of scripture and - broke its seams and fabric.

So I will at first beging by backing up - just before the parrbles that dealt with ‘the Sower’ - and then I shall go forward to just what follows that same parable and show how the parrable of the Weeds is just such a telescoping - a lifting out - taking the most important thing from the long parable of the sower - and zooming in - expanding - that most important thing.

There is an over riding aspect of scriptures of which we can say is the summation of all scriptures. It is Providence. If one understand very little as to what Providence is - then reading scriptures is a bit like watching a play and getting up to go to the lobby to make a phone call any time the main actor comes on stage. Without every seeing or hearing the main actor of a play - we shall indeed “see the play” and come away with an idea of what the play was about - but it shall not be the same “about” that the writer of the play intended. It is only, once we experience the main character of the play - the one around whom all events take their meaning - that we really enter into the play and understand its spirit.

Providence. We seldom thing of ‘it’ as anything more than those occasional events in life which we wish we could change but cannot. When someone dies unexpectedly and leaves behind a human tragedy in his remaining family - we sometimes have nothing to say in the face of the in-understandable - than to comfort the widow with the words “We have to believe that it was God’s will. All things happen for a reason. It was God’s will. It was just - his time.” We regulate ‘God’s will’ to the moments in which it was impossible for us to assert - our own will.

The meaning of Providence can well be seen in the two words that both the Hebrews and Greeks used but our English has only one words for. World. The first use indicates the world as governed by Providence - and the second use indicates the world as governed by fate, destiny, devoid of God being its cause and attributing the running of the things of the world to the self-necessity of created things and events. The first meaning of “world” is the world which goes on forever and in reality is all there every was or shall be. It is the world without end. The second World is a governing which - does end. It is that way of life which the scriptures say will come to an end - as the end times. Neither use - indicates an end of annihilation of things or events - but of a change in the governing of these very same things and events.

For Jesus of the gospels… God’s will was predominant. His will was always the cause and the inner meaning of all events that Jesus experienced. In today’s words - God’s will - was the every day reality that Jesus experienced. His Father’s will was the very substance - of reality. Providence, which takes place every day around us no matter if we know it or not - is the Will of God Jesus was always taking about.

At times - in the gospels - it seems as if Jesus and his disciple were talking a different language with each other. Yet we know that they all spoke a common Hebrew or a form of Aramaic. And the reason is that while Jesus always experienced reality and events as an expression of the Will of God (and knew the inner meaning of events) the disciple most often filtered reality into themselves based upon - fate - destiny - or what is sometimes called the necessity of the created world. Of view of the world and its events as having a necessary and predictable action and reaction based rules gained through human experience. And so when news was received about the death of Lazareth - Jesus says that Larareth is ‘sleeping’ and the disciples go on and on about the death of Lazareth and the necessity of the funeral and the grief of the family etc.. - all mindful of those things which necessary follow upon the death of someone. Only when they draw Jesus back into the conversation does Jesus make it clear that he is coming from a view that death - is a spiritual condition. A separation from God - and that has not happened to Lazareth. And so we experience in the gospels that although Jesus and the disciples are using the same words - they are each coming from a different mindset of what reality - is in cause and meaning.

The parable of the Sower follows upon the preceding subject of doing the will of God. Jesus had just been comparing what it is like not to be doing the will of his father - and someone comes and says his mother and brothers are outside looking for him. The term brothers here is used in a way of discipleship. Jesus is the rabbi and his disciples are his own group. Together they are a brotherhood. We still use the term today when we call nuns ’sister’ and we call monks and male members of a religious society ’ brother’. And Jesus takes the occasion of when (whoever it was that came to where he was speaking and announced within the hearing of the crowd “Your mother and brothers are outside “ - Jesus says “Who is my mother and my brother ?- anyone who does the Will of my Father - is my mother, my brother - my family“.

So, as is often the case, the subject is The Will of God. Providence. This governing of things and events - which governing was also called the Kingdom of God. The kingdom. That in which the governing of the king - takes place. Far more than just a physical boundary of a country - it is within each person who abides by the governing of the king. Jesus had been speaking about if we are cooperating with Providence or not. If the Will of God is what is governs us - or not.

We can easily understand the Kingdom of God when Jesus claims that it is his own presence. At the start of his public work - Jesus begins with the announcement of his own presence “The Kingdom of God is upon you.” - because we can easily see that within Jesus he himself is governed by the Will of God. It is - here - present - right in the midst of everything else that is going on. Surrounded by it as a fish is surrounded by water - we can not see it as we can see a table or a tree - because it is a governing. The real cause and purpose and meaning - of all things and all events. IT is - reality itself in as much as it - is all there is - and anything else is just imagined or a crude human way of explaining the causes of things and events.

In the parable of the Sower - if you remember - God himself is the sower - walking down the streets of life’s busy events - through which the experience of its events God plants within us - seeds. And you remember that these seeds are also likened to that which becomes he light of our conscience - which light we should be using to see the events of this world by. If we ignore our conscience it is as if a light was lighted in the room but placed under a basket or behind the couch. The parable of the sower is in a few parts. The seed that falls on the road, the seed which falls by the rocky side of the road, the seed which falls among the weeds and brush further off the roadway - and the seed which falls into the fertile ground which is the furthest off the roadway.

Of these places where the seed fell - Jesus now lifts one place out and now begins to zoom in on it. The place where the seeds fell among the roadside weeds and thorn bushes.

Matt 13:24 (a general English translation)
The Lord begins by telling us that he is going to draw a allegorical parallel between the Kingdom of Heaven (the Providential governing of things and events) by using the sower and a field. Notice that in the parable of the sower just before this - the sower was walking down the pathway (roadway) throwing his seed. In this current parable the seed is sown into a field (more fitting to the real act). So we are to understand a similarity between the roadway and the field. The similarity is that while the roadway represents the things and events that happen to us as we go about the commerce of our daily lives - the field is a much broader overview. It is the place where all seed is sown. A garden. A farm field. So it is now that we are considering the same daily events - but in a total - all encompassing way. It is the earth or world as a whole which includes all time and all things and all events and all men.

The owner of the field is of course God. Since slaves are involved we can assume that the slaves were sent to do the sowing - just as they were sent to check on the field and as the harvesters would be later sent, and the reapers. This owner then is God who need only speak the word of his will - and it is carried out by intermediaries who perform it exactly and without question and need not know the purposes of what they are directed to do.

When the narration say that the seeds sprouted - it is talking of the small tender shoots that break the ground. When the text speaks of these shoots forming ‘heads’ the meaning is that the small tender leaves are breaking out from the shoot - and by the shape and color and suck - the servants can now see that weeds are also growing among the wheat shoots. But as yet - these small sprouts are small and it is difficult to tell which is the wheat and which is the weeds from among what is yet still tiny shoots.

Did not God sow good seeds? Of course he did. He always does. He does not sow any other kind. Interestingly - this seems to say that the cause, the reason, and the purpose - hidden within every and all events and things which take place on the stage of creation - is the good purposes of God. Also interesting is that the weed-seed is sown - when people sleeping - unaware - unconscious to reality and its events - and this seed is sown by what the text describes as ‘man’. The transliteration from the Greek is…

“An-enemy man this-did.” the owner states.

It is often our habit to imagine within the parable that the weed-seed is sown by disembodied evil spirits who arrange things and events in opposition to God. A war (if your will) between God and the evil spirits - played out on the stage of creation - and the prize is the souls of men. But this type of concept is not in the text. What the parable is saying is that all events and things of this created world - are always and everywhere under the total governing of God’s will. The evil - comes not into the world - but comes somehow and in someway from our own human nature. Exactly how that is I need not explain here. It is enough to know that the world of created things and events is always - under the direction of the Kingdom of God. As John said in the opening of his gospel “Without Him no-thing comes to-be.”

On the one hand it is difficult for us to look around at the world - and believe that all things and all events are totally under the good purposes and will of God! Yet it is very clear and from the most reliable source - that this is indeed the case and the truth. What is weed-seed is within - man - and always remains - within man. The battle is not “out there” in the world - it is totally - within. “Our battle is with principalities in high places.” refers to a spiritual battle deep within our soul. And all that comes to us personally on the stage of the world - is sent with one single purpose in God’s mind - to aide us in a battle which must be our own. Man has freewill and God will not violate that freewill. God uses all things and events of creation to form us (“Let us form man to our own image”) - in response to what he knows is within our heart and mind at every moment.

This only makes simple sense and indeed we already knew this when a child. God IS in total control of all things and all events - he is in total control of - our experiences. And it is through our daily experiences - that God is forming us. Do you remember the last parable when I said that the seeds thrown are the ‘word’ and the growing of them is within our conscience? How these ‘word’s come to us through the daily events of our life? - it is through our experiences that happen to us in life - that God forms us into his image. God uses as his tool the gentle persuasion or the hard hammer of life’s - experiences - to form us. And we already knew this - didn’t we.

So it we - collectively thought out all time - and individually - who are the field. It is within us - that the wheat (the good seed - the word) is sown and it is within us that the good seed and the weed-seed sprouts. The weed-seed is not sown within us from the outside. It is not what goes into a man that makes him unclear but rather what comes out of a man’s heart that makes that man unclean.

When the owner says that the shoots are too small and the difference to difficult to tell when so small - he is telling us that within the depths of ourselves (heart and mind) we ourselves (the slaves or servants in this case) are not able to root out only the bad and leave the good. The capability is - just not there - at least not at the depth of where these are just shoots. While we are able to do something about our sins when they are plain as day - we are not able to roots sin from our subconscious motives. This takes God himself to do.

As we explore this we are able to see more and more how this is so like what has been described so well in the Orthodox and Catholic churches - as the spiritual or mystical life. A life which is not really full of the unusual and phenomena - but rather is composed of - spiritual progress - a slow formation - done not by our own efforts at acetic practices but by the seemingly mundane daily events with which our own cooperation is needed.

While the first parable of the Sower described for us how God plants his word (seed) within us (through our personal experiences of daily life) and completes with Jesus telling us that the seed does not grow unless we visit our conscience and make the light of conscience that light by which we see the world… this further parable of the Weeds (introduced when the seed is choked in growth by the thorns) goes on to - focus in - zoom in - on this internal battle that does not take place outside but inside us.

Harvest time - is not one particular time. Different herbs and growth comes to full bloom (and time for harvesting) in its own time. So in reality somewhere that there is farm land - harvesting takes place over several weeks and according to what is ripe for harvesting. If one wishes to harvest all at once - then one must know the germination and span of time for each plant - and must plant the different seeds accordingly. Or - only plant one type of crop or just a few crops with the same maturation span. While the English translation speaks of the good seed as “wheat” it does so because the Greek word used is “grass” and the Hebrew meaning of that word ‘grass’ does not mean just wheat but rather encompasses all low plant like growth. The word may be used to indicate something restricted to one item such as wheat - but in general and a universal sense it means all low plant growth. In general, in early Hebrew, plant life is divided into three types. Grass (things that grow and remain low to the ground) bush (things that grow to the height of the waist or shoulders) and tree (things that grow taller than a man). So we should understand from the text that ‘harvest time’ seems to be meant in both the general overall way - and also in a particular way. There is one ‘harvest time’ but it is composed of many harvest times.

The instructions to the reapers is going to be that they - first - gather the grown weeds - and burn them. God is going to save the harvest of the good - by purging the field - of the bad.

We often think that the hard thins and uncomfortable things and events which come to us in daily life - may be a punishment from God regarding some sins we have. But Go’s view is that it is not a punishment - it is a purgation. It is not any evil which has come to us by way of some event in daily life - it is rather - a good - a purgation of the field - which intent is to root out the evil in us - and leave the remaining good.

Purgation in scriptures - often joined to the idea of fire - is uncomfortable to us. Yet it is our part in the cooperation - to have faith that what is taking place is totally under the control and guidance of Providence - and it is providing for us a means (which means we do not need to understand the workings of) a means by which what is unreal (remember I said that the evil was sown in unconsciousness - while not in consciousness of reality and its events) this un-reality is rooted out from our hearts.

If Providence is God providing all for us. If Providence is - reality. And the only reality there is - is Providence. Then sin - in its essence - is un-reality and self-providence.

It does us no good if the light within our conscience - is unreality. It does us no good if the Word is a reality other - than the reality which surrounds us. And it is the - experience - of reality - that has meaning and purpose for us. We as humans are not just another ‘thing’ among other things.

If things and events have any meaning and purpose for us - then what is important about things and events is not themselves - but rather their meaning and purpose within our experience of reality - which is to say - within the Will and Providence of God.

The “end of the world” then that scriptures speaks of is primarily - not - an end in the sense of an annihilation of the matter and material and events of this world - but and end rather through Providentially arranged purgations it is the end of being governed by things and events of the world in a way that has no reality to their true meaning and purpose.

Now let me turn the subject for a moment.

It makes no sense for a man who raised within the English language and knows little of Russian, to go out and try to make a speech in Russian. And so it is that my little posts are intended for those who are familiar with the language of the One Holy Catholic church.

Allow me to make two substitutions in order to better say something.

Allow me for the moments to call the entire church (Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Byzantine, Albanian .. Etc… seven sacraments) - by the Greek term of - catholic. Allow me to capitalize it - Catholic. Universal.

Allow me to call Providence, the Will of God, the Kingdom of God, God’s action within the world that theology calls ‘economy’ - reality. And let me capitalize that also - Reality.

There is no conflict within the Catholic church - that God is the author of - reality. In fact a summation of Catholic teaching is that God is the only creator and what gets created is only created by God. If God does NOT create it - it does not come to-be.

Scripture is a human witness to God’s actions within the world. Scripture is a witness to - economy. Providence - and its actions in the world. One of the most notable aspects of scriptures is the fact that what can seem like ordinary human events in history - is actually a plan - guided - and unfolding - set into motion and actively progressed by God himself. In fact scripture sets forth that the ‘ordinary reality’ of the world - IS Providence - although we perhaps do not know it.

If someone lack knowing about the Catholic doctrine of Providence (as that is easy to do today because early church writings take knowledge of Providence for granted a known by the Christian - after all - it is the main subject about which acts the New Testament records) - then it is easy to believe that the Will of God we are to do - is to train and learn and love the doctrines and precepts of the church and live them in application to ourselves. We all do this to a greater or lesser extent. But in the absence of a sense of Providence, this “Will of God” can seem to be - a set of rules - intellectual arguments - acetics - all treated really as if the means for behavioral modification. In the worst case this is fundamentalism where evil is a threat from “outside” in the world and the battle seems to be in ridding the world of evil. This tends to a division of groups. Us - and - them. A concept where some are saved and some are lost - according to which group. This is decidedly a not-catholic view when applied on a social level but to show that would take more space and this is a post. “I am of Paul, I am of Peter, I am of Apollo.. Etc..” Paul himself has already told us in epistles that this division is no good - a misapplication of what it is to be - Christs’.

As I said before - if one is unaware of the churches doctrines on Providence - and unaware of the importance of daily Providence and our cooperation with it - one might as well be leaving for the lobby anytime the main character of the play takes the stage.

Who is the sower? It is God.

What is the field? It is within us. Within us collectively as humans (across all time and history) and within us individually - right at this moment.

What is sown? - the seeds of the only reality that there is - Providence. The creative - word.

How is it sown? - it comes to us by way of the daily events which we experience. All - tailored exactly for us according to how God entirely and fully knows our heart And mind - at the moment - and what he determines to be the best event to apply to us - in his part of forming us into his own image.

How do these seeds grown within us? Planted in our spirit (mind and heart) they exist together with our own mistaken view of how the world works and the purpose or its events. Our own mistaken view - one prompted and prompting - self-providence over God’s Providence.

Where is the ‘good ground’ in which the good seed can grow to - a hundred fold? It is within our conscience. It is when we use what Providence itself has planted within our conscience - as the light be which we see - the world that we experience.

Can we ourselves - root out the weeds? No. We can’t. It is beyond our ability (the capability of a human) to root out only the bad and leave the good. We can only go - so far - in the doctoring or therapy (whatever you want to call it) of our own human spirit. We can change our behavior - but we alone can not change the root - of the subconscious (remember I said the weed-seed is sown when and where - we are not-conscious).

How is the weed-seed rooted out? It is rooted out by Providence. That means through the arrangement and total guidance of - these same exactly daily events and experiences that God creates and brings to us. It is the Will - the actions - the economy - of God which does the rooting out. We need not understand it - we only need to do our part in cooperation with it for it to be effective. We do ourselves a great mis-service - when we try to second guess why this event happens to us or that event happens to us. God seldom shares with us the why and the wherefore of his rooting out - because we are just not capable of understanding much about it. It reaches to the depths of our subconscious.

One does not need to posses all the knowledge of medical surgery or medications that the doctor has - in order to be successfully treated by a doctor. In fact we are warned in a friendly way several times in the gospels not to second guess the purposes and goals of Providence (“Rabbi - for whose sins was this man born blind - his own or his parents? “ and Jesus replies that it was for neither of these second-guessed reasons.).

Before the field is cellared and becomes a good harvest - comes the purgations. The reapers are told to - first - gather the weed-seed plants - and burn them. In our parable it is to say that certain events that happen to us have the intention of reaching into our spirit (mind and heart) and especially to the subconscious levels (sown in our not-conscious) to be ripped out and burned at the same time. It is clear that this will be uncomfortable to us. And now we can plainly see how it is that some spiritual writers talk of the world (that internal governing of things and events which is not referenced to God) - that world-government of dead fate, dead destiny, and necessity - we can now see how some spiritual writers describe the end of the world to be a purgation by fire. And if we take that in a literal and fundamentalist way - we shall wrongly expect some cataclysmic event to take place at some future date and time of history by which the material and substance of the created world will come to an end.
The ‘end’ does not bring with it - God. But anytime God comes to us he himself is the occasion of the end of that governing of the world which only exists within us as a misconception of reality and Providence. This is how Paul can tell us in epistle that the “end times” are already upon us. The presence of Christ - to the Christian - IS - the end of that world government - and the beginning of the world government known as Providence. The Kingdom of God. The Word. The Will of God - and the person of the resurrected Jesus Christ.

One last mention in this long post which will surely bring me trouble…

Christianity - to be Christian - to live day by day in a bit of conscious awareness that events and duties which come to us each day are sent to us by a living God who knows what is in our hearts and minds at any moment - and who send these events in order to plant seeds - purge weeds - and form us more and more into himself - a spiritual way of life which the King James version rightly translates within the Acts as - “the Way“…

Makes Christianity - a mystery religion. That is - a religion which primary effectiveness resides not in dogma (although dogma may be an expression of it) and not in intellectual concepts (although theology and philosophy may be and expression of it) and not in ascetics (although ascetics may be and expression of it) - but rather in the mystery of an experience of union between God and the Christian.

All other aspects of the Christian religion - are secondary to and take their meaning from - the central fact of the union and cooperation between - God himself and the Christian. A mystery - meaning the fact and experience of this union defies human analysis. It is not something known about - it is something known only in the experience of it.

This - experience - is not ‘in’ unusual phenomena. It is not ‘in’ scriptures. It is not ‘in’ the practice of ascetics or intellectually correct discussion of doctrines - nor is it ‘in’ the events that Providence arranges for us each day - it is only ‘in’ - the experience of - the “good ground”.

It is only had with the experience of and within - our own conscience. As a ‘light’ given by which to live our next - daily events. It only grows more sure and in clarity - as we spend time with it - and if we - use it to define - reality. And when the storms come (moments of purgation) - we stick to it.

In this light - purgation (the gathering and burning of the weeds) is not a punishment - it is a good done to us by God. It takes the premise that we are already fallen. We are already away from reality (the reality that Providence is the only real governing of creation that exists - and there is no other governing of creation) . We are NOT saints - but we shall be formed into saints not by own actions of intelligence nor logic nor simply by obedience to any rules that exist but rather from this - mystery of union - and cooperation with daily Providence.

This is how I see certain things and I am aware that my posts are difficult to read and that I am not a good writer. I welcome discussion (even passionate discussion) that are more than claims of heresy or use the “Latin!” card. My apologies for typos which I do not have the time to correct.

-ray


The Parable of The Weeds

The last time I wrote a little something - it was about the Parable of the Sower, today we will looked around that, just a bit before and after.

The gospels are very connected. There is a flow - a continuity - through out. We tend to read them and understand them in chapters - and they are not in chapters. Chapters are a devise and divisions created by early translators and as such they lead us to assume what the early translators assumed. Anyone first coming to scriptures should come by way of reading with these divisions but there comes a point when one should realize that these divisions are an aide not included in the originals as such can assist us or hurt us.

Most of the time, when we read the gospels, there is an underlying unity to portions which, on the surface, seem to deal with different subjects. Therefore we can sometimes see that some parables which seem to have little relationship to each other - are actually two ways to express the same thing. It is a little like peering into a diamond by rotating it in your hand and looking into the diamond through several of its cut facets. What we see through each facet - is the same internal fire. This is typical of the gospels in more than just the parables. There is also a typical Jewish was of (what I call) telescoping about scriptures both old and new testaments. That is that the writer will treat the same thing in several ways (an underlying continuity) and then one of the sections will be lifted out - and displayed much fuller. If one is not aware of this than one can run on assuming that the writer has moved to a new subject and be totally unaware that the write is - still - treating the - same subject in a much fuller way.

A prime example of this telescoping takes place in the very first books of the Old Testament. The very first book is really very small… it is the treatment of the seven days of creation. The second book is generally called the Second Creation stoy and the seven days is generally called the First Creation story by translators. Within the events of the seven days the even of the creation of Adam is a small thing that seems to happen on the sixth day “Let us form man in our own image..” and the forming of man goes on for only a few lines followed by the rest on the seventh day. In this way we could say that the forming of man is only one sixth of that book (the sixth day). Yet that event of the sixth day is lifted out - and becomes the second book (which is generally thought of as a second creation story). We are all familiar with it - it is the narration of Adam and Even in the garden. When we read in a continuous way we tend to think that the events of Adam and Eve took place after the seventh day - but according to Hebrew literary style - the narration of Adam and Eve and the garden are first mentioned on the sixth day as a “forming” - and next the writer take the event of that ‘forming’ and telescope right into it. It is as if we stood far off at first and watched thing happen - and among the things that take place - there is one more important than the others and we now zoom in on that event to look at it in much fuller detail. There is always a continuity of symbols when this is done - yet if not understood in the original writer’s language (and how many of us can read the Hebrew?) this - flowering - this closer detail - can be missed. And so it is that we should understand that the events of the Garden should be thought of as being contained in the previous narration of the few linens begun by “Let us form man in our own image.” And we should further come to understand that the ‘second creation story’ is not a ‘second creation’ but rather a fuller, closer, and more detailed look at the most important event that took place on the sixth day. So too the next book (dealing with Cain and able) is a lifting out of the narration of the garden its most important event (the fall, the eating of the apple) and treating the reality of that event anew in a much wider and more detailed way.

So too does Our Lord often speak this way in the gospels. And we should not be surprised, in fact we should expect it - being a Jew of Jews, a Hebrew among Hebrews, an embodiment of scripture (or shall we say that scripture is an embodiment of him) - it would rather be the surprise if Jesus did not follow the continuity of scripture and - broke its seams and fabric.

So I will at first beging by backing up - just before the parrbles that dealt with ‘the Sower’ - and then I shall go forward to just what follows that same parable and show how the parrable of the Weeds is just such a telescoping - a lifting out - taking the most important thing from the long parable of the sower - and zooming in - expanding - that most important thing.

There is an over riding aspect of scriptures of which we can say is the summation of all scriptures. It is Providence. If one understand very little as to what Providence is - then reading scriptures is a bit like watching a play and getting up to go to the lobby to make a phone call any time the main actor comes on stage. Without every seeing or hearing the main actor of a play - we shall indeed “see the play” and come away with an idea of what the play was about - but it shall not be the same “about” that the writer of the play intended. It is only, once we experience the main character of the play - the one around whom all events take their meaning - that we really enter into the play and understand its spirit.

Providence. We seldom thing of ‘it’ as anything more than those occasional events in life which we wish we could change but cannot. When someone dies unexpectedly and leaves behind a human tragedy in his remaining family - we sometimes have nothing to say in the face of the in-understandable - than to comfort the widow with the words “We have to believe that it was God’s will. All things happen for a reason. It was God’s will. It was just - his time.” We regulate ‘God’s will’ to the moments in which it was impossible for us to assert - our own will.

The meaning of Providence can well be seen in the two words that both the Hebrews and Greeks used but our English has only one words for. World. The first use indicates the world as governed by Providence - and the second use indicates the world as governed by fate, destiny, devoid of God being its cause and attributing the running of the things of the world to the self-necessity of created things and events. The first meaning of “world” is the world which goes on forever and in reality is all there every was or shall be. It is the world without end. The second World is a governing which - does end. It is that way of life which the scriptures say will come to an end - as the end times. Neither use - indicates an end of annihilation of things or events - but of a change in the governing of these very same things and events.

For Jesus of the gospels… God’s will was predominant. His will was always the cause and the inner meaning of all events that Jesus experienced. In today’s words - God’s will - was the every day reality that Jesus experienced. His Father’s will was the very substance - of reality. Providence, which takes place every day around us no matter if we know it or not - is the Will of God Jesus was always taking about.

At times - in the gospels - it seems as if Jesus and his disciple were talking a different language with each other. Yet we know that they all spoke a common Hebrew or a form of Aramaic. And the reason is that while Jesus always experienced reality and events as an expression of the Will of God (and knew the inner meaning of events) the disciple most often filtered reality into themselves based upon - fate - destiny - or what is sometimes called the necessity of the created world. Of view of the world and its events as having a necessary and predictable action and reaction based rules gained through human experience. And so when news was received about the death of Lazareth - Jesus says that Larareth is ‘sleeping’ and the disciples go on and on about the death of Lazareth and the necessity of the funeral and the grief of the family etc.. - all mindful of those things which necessary follow upon the death of someone. Only when they draw Jesus back into the conversation does Jesus make it clear that he is coming from a view that death - is a spiritual condition. A separation from God - and that has not happened to Lazareth. And so we experience in the gospels that although Jesus and the disciples are using the same words - they are each coming from a different mindset of what reality - is in cause and meaning.

The parable of the Sower follows upon the preceding subject of doing the will of God. Jesus had just been comparing what it is like not to be doing the will of his father - and someone comes and says his mother and brothers are outside looking for him. The term brothers here is used in a way of discipleship. Jesus is the rabbi and his disciples are his own group. Together they are a brotherhood. We still use the term today when we call nuns ’sister’ and we call monks and male members of a religious society ’ brother’. And Jesus takes the occasion of when (whoever it was that came to where he was speaking and announced within the hearing of the crowd “Your mother and brothers are outside “ - Jesus says “Who is my mother and my brother ?- anyone who does the Will of my Father - is my mother, my brother - my family“.

So, as is often the case, the subject is The Will of God. Providence. This governing of things and events - which governing was also called the Kingdom of God. The kingdom. That in which the governing of the king - takes place. Far more than just a physical boundary of a country - it is within each person who abides by the governing of the king. Jesus had been speaking about if we are cooperating with Providence or not. If the Will of God is what is governs us - or not.

We can easily understand the Kingdom of God when Jesus claims that it is his own presence. At the start of his public work - Jesus begins with the announcement of his own presence “The Kingdom of God is upon you.” - because we can easily see that within Jesus he himself is governed by the Will of God. It is - here - present - right in the midst of everything else that is going on. Surrounded by it as a fish is surrounded by water - we can not see it as we can see a table or a tree - because it is a governing. The real cause and purpose and meaning - of all things and all events. IT is - reality itself in as much as it - is all there is - and anything else is just imagined or a crude human way of explaining the causes of things and events.

In the parable of the Sower - if you remember - God himself is the sower - walking down the streets of life’s busy events - through which the experience of its events God plants within us - seeds. And you remember that these seeds are also likened to that which becomes he light of our conscience - which light we should be using to see the events of this world by. If we ignore our conscience it is as if a light was lighted in the room but placed under a basket or behind the couch. The parable of the sower is in a few parts. The seed that falls on the road, the seed which falls by the rocky side of the road, the seed which falls among the weeds and brush further off the roadway - and the seed which falls into the fertile ground which is the furthest off the roadway.

Of these places where the seed fell - Jesus now lifts one place out and now begins to zoom in on it. The place where the seeds fell among the roadside weeds and thorn bushes.

Matt 13:24n (a general English translation)
The Lord begins by telling us that he is going to draw a allegorical parallel between the Kingdom of Heaven (the Providential governing of things and events) by using the sower and a field. Notice that in the parable of the sower just before this - the sower was walking down the pathway (roadway) throwing his seed. In this current parable the seed is sown into a field (more fitting to the real act). So we are to understand a similarity between the roadway and the field. The similarity is that while the roadway represents the things and events that happen to us as we go about the commerce of our daily lives - the field is a much broader overview. It is the place where all seed is sown. A garden. A farm field. So it is now that we are considering the same daily events - but in a total - all encompassing way. It is the earth or world as a whole which includes all time and all things and all events and all men.

The owner of the field is of course God. Since slaves are involved we can assume that the slaves were sent to do the sowing - just as they were sent to check on the field and as the harvesters would be later sent, and the reapers. This owner then is God who need only speak the word of his will - and it is carried out by intermediaries who perform it exactly and without question and need not know the purposes of what they are directed to do.

When the narration say that the seeds sprouted - it is talking of the small tender shoots that break the ground. When the text speaks of these shoots forming ‘heads’ the meaning is that the small tender leaves are breaking out from the shoot - and by the shape and color and suck - the servants can now see that weeds are also growing among the wheat shoots. But as yet - these small sprouts are small and it is difficult to tell which is the wheat and which is the weeds from among what is yet still tiny shoots.

Did not God sow good seeds? Of course he did. He always does. He does not sow any other kind. Interestingly - this seems to say that the cause, the reason, and the purpose - hidden within every and all events and things which take place on the stage of creation - is the good purposes of God. Also interesting is that the weed-seed is sown - when people sleeping - unaware - unconscious to reality and its events - and this seed is sown by what the text describes as ‘man’. The transliteration from the Greek is…

“An-enemy man this-did.” the owner states.

It is often our habit to imagine within the parable that the weed-seed is sown by disembodied evil spirits who arrange things and events in opposition to God. A war (if your will) between God and the evil spirits - played out on the stage of creation - and the prize is the souls of men. But this type of concept is not in the text. What the parable is saying is that all events and things of this created world - are always and everywhere under the total governing of God’s will. The evil - comes not into the world - but comes somehow and in someway from our own human nature. Exactly how that is I need not explain here. It is enough to know that the world of created things and events is always - under the direction of the Kingdom of God. As John said in the opening of his gospel “Without Him no-thing comes to-be.”

On the one hand it is difficult for us to look around at the world - and believe that all things and all events are totally under the good purposes and will of God! Yet it is very clear and from the most reliable source - that this is indeed the case and the truth. What is weed-seed is within - man - and always remains - within man. The battle is not “out there” in the world - it is totally - within. “Our battle is with principalities in high places.” refers to a spiritual battle deep within our soul. And all that comes to us personally on the stage of the world - is sent with one single purpose in God’s mind - to aide us in a battle which must be our own. Man has freewill and God will not violate that freewill. God uses all things and events of creation to form us (“Let us form man to our own image”) - in response to what he knows is within our heart and mind at every moment.

This only makes simple sense and indeed we already knew this when a child. God IS in total control of all things and all events - he is in total control of - our experiences. And it is through our daily experiences - that God is forming us. Do you remember the last parable when I said that the seeds thrown are the ‘word’ and the growing of them is within our conscience? How these ‘word’s come to us through the daily events of our life? - it is through our experiences that happen to us in life - that God forms us into his image. God uses as his tool the gentle persuasion or the hard hammer of life’s - experiences - to form us. And we already knew this - didn’t we.

So it we - collectively thought out all time - and individually - who are the field. It is within us - that the wheat (the good seed - the word) is sown and it is within us that the good seed and the weed-seed sprouts. The weed-seed is not sown within us from the outside. It is not what goes into a man that makes him unclear but rather what comes out of a man’s heart that makes that man unclean.

When the owner says that the shoots are too small and the difference to difficult to tell when so small - he is telling us that within the depths of ourselves (heart and mind) we ourselves (the slaves or servants in this case) are not able to root out only the bad and leave the good. The capability is - just not there - at least not at the depth of where these are just shoots. While we are able to do something about our sins when they are plain as day - we are not able to roots sin from our subconscious motives. This takes God himself to do.

As we explore this we are able to see more and more how this is so like what has been described so well in the Orthodox and Catholic churches - as the spiritual or mystical life. A life which is not really full of the unusual and phenomena - but rather is composed of - spiritual progress - a slow formation - done not by our own efforts at acetic practices but by the seemingly mundane daily events with which our own cooperation is needed.

While the first parable of the Sower described for us how God plants his word (seed) within us (through our personal experiences of daily life) and completes with Jesus telling us that the seed does not grow unless we visit our conscience and make the light of conscience that light by which we see the world… this further parable of the Weeds (introduced when the seed is choked in growth by the thorns) goes on to - focus in - zoom in - on this internal battle that does not take place outside but inside us.

Harvest time - is not one particular time. Different herbs and growth comes to full bloom (and time for harvesting) in its own time. So in reality somewhere that there is farm land - harvesting takes place over several weeks and according to what is ripe for harvesting. If one wishes to harvest all at once - then one must know the germination and span of time for each plant - and must plant the different seeds accordingly. Or - only plant one type of crop or just a few crops with the same maturation span. While the English translation speaks of the good seed as “wheat” it does so because the Greek word used is “grass” and the Hebrew meaning of that word ‘grass’ does not mean just wheat but rather encompasses all low plant like growth. The word may be used to indicate something restricted to one item such as wheat - but in general and a universal sense it means all low plant growth. In general, in early Hebrew, plant life is divided into three types. Grass (things that grow and remain low to the ground) bush (things that grow to the height of the waist or shoulders) and tree (things that grow taller than a man). So we should understand from the text that ‘harvest time’ seems to be meant in both the general overall way - and also in a particular way. There is one ‘harvest time’ but it is composed of many harvest times.

The instructions to the reapers is going to be that they - first - gather the grown weeds - and burn them. God is going to save the harvest of the good - by purging the field - of the bad.

We often think that the hard thins and uncomfortable things and events which come to us in daily life - may be a punishment from God regarding some sins we have. But Go’s view is that it is not a punishment - it is a purgation. It is not any evil which has come to us by way of some event in daily life - it is rather - a good - a purgation of the field - which intent is to root out the evil in us - and leave the remaining good.

Purgation in scriptures - often joined to the idea of fire - is uncomfortable to us. Yet it is our part in the cooperation - to have faith that what is taking place is totally under the control and guidance of Providence - and it is providing for us a means (which means we do not need to understand the workings of) a means by which what is unreal (remember I said that the evil was sown in unconsciousness - while not in consciousness of reality and its events) this un-reality is rooted out from our hearts.

If Providence is God providing all for us. If Providence is - reality. And the only reality there is - is Providence. Then sin - in its essence - is un-reality and self-providence.

It does us no good if the light within our conscience - is unreality. It does us no good if the Word is a reality other - than the reality which surrounds us. And it is the - experience - of reality - that has meaning and purpose for us. We as humans are not just another ‘thing’ among other things.

If things and events have any meaning and purpose for us - then what is important about things and events is not themselves - but rather their meaning and purpose within our experience of reality - which is to say - within the Will and Providence of God.

The “end of the world” then that scriptures speaks of is primarily - not - an end in the sense of an annihilation of the matter and material and events of this world - but and end rather through Providentially arranged purgations it is the end of being governed by things and events of the world in a way that has no reality to their true meaning and purpose.

Now let me turn the subject for a moment.

It makes no sense for a man who raised within the English language and knows little of Russian, to go out and try to make a speech in Russian. And so it is that my little posts are intended for those who are familiar with the language of the One Holy Catholic church.

Allow me to make two substitutions in order to better say something.

Allow me for the moments to call the entire church (Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Byzantine, Albanian .. Etc… seven sacraments) - by the Greek term of - catholic. Allow me to capitalize it - Catholic. Universal.

Allow me to call Providence, the Will of God, the Kingdom of God, God’s action within the world that theology calls ‘economy’ - reality. And let me capitalize that also - Reality.

There is no conflict within the Catholic church - that God is the author of - reality. In fact a summation of Catholic teaching is that God is the only creator and what gets created is only created by God. If God does NOT create it - it does not come to-be.

Scripture is a human witness to God’s actions within the world. Scripture is a witness to - economy. Providence - and its actions in the world. One of the most notable aspects of scriptures is the fact that what can seem like ordinary human events in history - is actually a plan - guided - and unfolding - set into motion and actively progressed by God himself. In fact scripture sets forth that the ‘ordinary reality’ of the world - IS Providence - although we perhaps do not know it.

If someone lack knowing about the Catholic doctrine of Providence (as that is easy to do today because early church writings take knowledge of Providence for granted a known by the Christian - after all - it is the main subject about which acts the New Testament records) - then it is easy to believe that the Will of God we are to do - is to train and learn and love the doctrines and precepts of the church and live them in application to ourselves. We all do this to a greater or lesser extent. But in the absence of a sense of Providence, this “Will of God” can seem to be - a set of rules - intellectual arguments - acetics - all treated really as if the means for behavioral modification. In the worst case this is fundamentalism where evil is a threat from “outside” in the world and the battle seems to be in ridding the world of evil. This tends to a division of groups. Us - and - them. A concept where some are saved and some are lost - according to which group. This is decidedly a not-catholic view when applied on a social level but to show that would take more space and this is a post. “I am of Paul, I am of Peter, I am of Apollo.. Etc..” Paul himself has already told us in epistles that this division is no good - a misapplication of what it is to be - Christs’.

As I said before - if one is unaware of the churches doctrines on Providence - and unaware of the importance of daily Providence and our cooperation with it - one might as well be leaving for the lobby anytime the main character of the play takes the stage.

Who is the sower? It is God.

What is the field? It is within us. Within us collectively as humans (across all time and history) and within us individually - right at this moment.

What is sown? - the seeds of the only reality that there is - Providence. The creative - word.

How is it sown? - it comes to us by way of the daily events which we experience. All - tailored exactly for us according to how God entirely and fully knows our heart And mind - at the moment - and what he determines to be the best event to apply to us - in his part of forming us into his own image.

How do these seeds grown within us? Planted in our spirit (mind and heart) they exist together with our own mistaken view of how the world works and the purpose or its events. Our own mistaken view - one prompted and prompting - self-providence over God’s Providence.

Where is the ‘good ground’ in which the good seed can grow to - a hundred fold? It is within our conscience. It is when we use what Providence itself has planted within our conscience - as the light be which we see - the world that we experience.

Can we ourselves - root out the weeds? No. We can’t. It is beyond our ability (the capability of a human) to root out only the bad and leave the good. We can only go - so far - in the doctoring or therapy (whatever you want to call it) of our own human spirit. We can change our behavior - but we alone can not change the root - of the subconscious (remember I said the weed-seed is sown when and where - we are not-conscious).

How is the weed-seed rooted out? It is rooted out by Providence. That means through the arrangement and total guidance of - these same exactly daily events and experiences that God creates and brings to us. It is the Will - the actions - the economy - of God which does the rooting out. We need not understand it - we only need to do our part in cooperation with it for it to be effective. We do ourselves a great mis-service - when we try to second guess why this event happens to us or that event happens to us. God seldom shares with us the why and the wherefore of his rooting out - because we are just not capable of understanding much about it. It reaches to the depths of our subconscious.

One does not need to posses all the knowledge of medical surgery or medications that the doctor has - in order to be successfully treated by a doctor. In fact we are warned in a friendly way several times in the gospels not to second guess the purposes and goals of Providence (“Rabbi - for whose sins was this man born blind - his own or his parents? “ and Jesus replies that it was for neither of these second-guessed reasons.).

Before the field is cellared and becomes a good harvest - comes the purgations. The reapers are told to - first - gather the weed-seed plants - and burn them. In our parable it is to say that certain events that happen to us have the intention of reaching into our spirit (mind and heart) and especially to the subconscious levels (sown in our not-conscious) to be ripped out and burned at the same time. It is clear that this will be uncomfortable to us. And now we can plainly see how it is that some spiritual writers talk of the world (that internal governing of things and events which is not referenced to God) - that world-government of dead fate, dead destiny, and necessity - we can now see how some spiritual writers describe the end of the world to be a purgation by fire. And if we take that in a literal and fundamentalist way - we shall wrongly expect some cataclysmic event to take place at some future date and time of history by which the material and substance of the created world will come to an end.
The ‘end’ does not bring with it - God. But anytime God comes to us he himself is the occasion of the end of that governing of the world which only exists within us as a misconception of reality and Providence. This is how Paul can tell us in epistle that the “end times” are already upon us. The presence of Christ - to the Christian - IS - the end of that world government - and the beginning of the world government known as Providence. The Kingdom of God. The Word. The Will of God - and the person of the resurrected Jesus Christ.

One last mention in this long post which will surely bring me trouble…

Christianity - to be Christian - to live day by day in a bit of conscious awareness that events and duties which come to us each day are sent to us by a living God who knows what is in our hearts and minds at any moment - and who send these events in order to plant seeds - purge weeds - and form us more and more into himself - a spiritual way of life which the King James version rightly translates within the Acts as - “the Way“…

Makes Christianity - a mystery religion. That is - a religion which primary effectiveness resides not in dogma (although dogma may be an expression of it) and not in intellectual concepts (although theology and philosophy may be and expression of it) and not in ascetics (although ascetics may be and expression of it) - but rather in the mystery of an experience of union between God and the Christian.

All other aspect

Matt 13:24

The last time I wrote a little something - it was about the Parable of the Sower, today we will looked around that, just a bit before and after.

The gospels are very connected. There is a flow - a continuity - through out. We tend to read them and understand them in chapters - isolated parts - and they are not in chapters. Chapters are a devise and divisions created by early translators and as such they lead us to assume what the early translators assumed. Anyone first coming to scriptures should come by way of reading with these divisions but there comes a point when one should realize that these divisions are an aide not included in the originals as such can assist us or hurt us.

Most of the time, when we read the gospels, there is an underlying unity to portions which, on the surface, seem to deal with different subjects. Therefore we can sometimes see that some parables which seem to have little relationship to each other - are actually two ways to express the same thing. It is a little like peering into a diamond by rotating it in your hand and looking into the diamond through several of its cut facets. What we see through each facet - is the same internal fire. This is typical of the gospels in more than just the parables. There is also a typical Jewish was of (what I call) telescoping about scriptures both old and new testaments. That is that the writer will treat the same thing in several ways (an underlying continuity) and then one of the sections will be lifted out - and displayed much fuller. If one is not aware of this than one can run on assuming that the writer has moved to a new subject and be totally unaware that the write is - still - treating the - same subject in a much fuller way.

A prime example of this telescoping takes place in the very first books of the Old Testament. The very first book is really very small… it is the treatment of the seven days of creation. The second book is generally called the Second Creation stoy and the seven days is generally called the First Creation story by translators. Within the events of the seven days the even of the creation of Adam is a small thing that seems to happen on the sixth day “Let us form man in our own image..” and the forming of man goes on for only a few lines followed by the rest on the seventh day. In this way we could say that the forming of man is only one sixth of that book (the sixth day). Yet that event of the sixth day is lifted out - and becomes the second book (which is generally thought of as a second creation story). We are all familiar with it - it is the narration of Adam and Even in the garden. When we read in a continuous way we tend to think that the events of Adam and Eve took place after the seventh day - but according to Hebrew literary style - the narration of Adam and Eve and the garden are first mentioned on the sixth day as a “forming” - and next the writer take the event of that ‘forming’ and telescope right into it. It is as if we stood far off at first and watched thing happen - and among the things that take place - there is one more important than the others and we now zoom in on that event to look at it in much fuller detail. There is always a continuity of symbols when this is done - yet if not understood in the original writer’s language (and how many of us can read the Hebrew?) this - flowering - this closer detail - can be missed. And so it is that we should understand that the events of the Garden should be thought of as being contained in the previous narration of the few linens begun by “Let us form man in our own image.” And we should further come to understand that the ‘second creation story’ is not a ‘second creation’ but rather a fuller, closer, and more detailed look at the most important event that took place on the sixth day. So too the next book (dealing with Cain and able) is a lifting out of the narration of the garden its most important event (the fall, the eating of the apple) and treating the reality of that event anew in a much wider and more detailed way.

So too does Our Lord often speak this way in the gospels. And we should not be surprised, in fact we should expect it - being a Jew of Jews, a Hebrew among Hebrews, an embodiment of scripture (or shall we say that scripture is an embodiment of him) - it would rather be the surprise if Jesus did not follow the continuity of scripture and - broke its seams and fabric.

So I will at first beging by backing up - just before the parrbles that dealt with ‘the Sower’ - and then I shall go forward to just what follows that same parable and show how the parrable of the Weeds is just such a telescoping - a lifting out - taking the most important thing from the long parable of the sower - and zooming in - expanding - that most important thing.

There is an over riding aspect of scriptures of which we can say is the summation of all scriptures. It is Providence. If one understand very little as to what Providence is - then reading scriptures is a bit like watching a play and getting up to go to the lobby to make a phone call any time the main actor comes on stage. Without every seeing or hearing the main actor of a play - we shall indeed “see the play” and come away with an idea of what the play was about - but it shall not be the same “about” that the writer of the play intended. It is only, once we experience the main character of the play - the one around whom all events take their meaning - that we really enter into the play and understand its spirit.

Providence. We seldom thing of ‘it’ as anything more than those occasional events in life which we wish we could change but cannot. When someone dies unexpectedly and leaves behind a human tragedy in his remaining family - we sometimes have nothing to say in the face of the in-understandable - than to comfort the widow with the words “We have to believe that it was God’s will. All things happen for a reason. It was God’s will. It was just - his time.” We regulate ‘God’s will’ to the moments in which it was impossible for us to assert - our own will.

The meaning of Providence can well be seen in the two words that both the Hebrews and Greeks used but our English has only one words for. World. The first use indicates the world as governed by Providence - and the second use indicates the world as governed by fate, destiny, devoid of God being its cause and attributing the running of the things of the world to the self-necessity of created things and events. The first meaning of “world” is the world which goes on forever and in reality is all there every was or shall be. It is the world without end. The second World is a governing which - does end. It is that way of life which the scriptures say will come to an end - as the end times. Neither use - indicates an end of annihilation of things or events - but of a change in the governing of these very same things and events.

For Jesus of the gospels… God’s will was predominant. His will was always the cause and the inner meaning of all events that Jesus experienced. In today’s words - God’s will - was the every day reality that Jesus experienced. His Father’s will was the very substance - of reality. Providence, which takes place every day around us no matter if we know it or not - is the Will of God Jesus was always taking about.

At times - in the gospels - it seems as if Jesus and his disciple were talking a different language with each other. Yet we know that they all spoke a common Hebrew or a form of Aramaic. And the reason is that while Jesus always experienced reality and events as an expression of the Will of God (and knew the inner meaning of events) the disciple most often filtered reality into themselves based upon - fate - destiny - or what is sometimes called the necessity of the created world. Of view of the world and its events as having a necessary and predictable action and reaction based rules gained through human experience. And so when news was received about the death of Lazareth - Jesus says that Larareth is ‘sleeping’ and the disciples go on and on about the death of Lazareth and the necessity of the funeral and the grief of the family etc.. - all mindful of those things which necessary follow upon the death of someone. Only when they draw Jesus back into the conversation does Jesus make it clear that he is coming from a view that death - is a spiritual condition. A separation from God - and that has not happened to Lazareth. And so we experience in the gospels that although Jesus and the disciples are using the same words - they are each coming from a different mindset of what reality - is in cause and meaning.

The parable of the Sower follows upon the preceding subject of doing the will of God. Jesus had just been comparing what it is like not to be doing the will of his father - and someone comes and says his mother and brothers are outside looking for him. The term brothers here is used in a way of discipleship. Jesus is the rabbi and his disciples are his own group. Together they are a brotherhood. We still use the term today when we call nuns ’sister’ and we call monks and male members of a religious society ’ brother’. And Jesus takes the occasion of when (whoever it was that came to where he was speaking and announced within the hearing of the crowd “Your mother and brothers are outside “ - Jesus says “Who is my mother and my brother ?- anyone who does the Will of my Father - is my mother, my brother - my family“.

So, as is often the case, the subject is The Will of God. Providence. This governing of things and events - which governing was also called the Kingdom of God. The kingdom. That in which the governing of the king - takes place. Far more than just a physical boundary of a country - it is within each person who abides by the governing of the king. Jesus had been speaking about if we are cooperating with Providence or not. If the Will of God is what is governs us - or not.

We can easily understand the Kingdom of God when Jesus claims that it is his own presence. At the start of his public work - Jesus begins with the announcement of his own presence “The Kingdom of God is upon you.” - because we can easily see that within Jesus he himself is governed by the Will of God. It is - here - present - right in the midst of everything else that is going on. Surrounded by it as a fish is surrounded by water - we can not see it as we can see a table or a tree - because it is a governing. The real cause and purpose and meaning - of all things and all events. IT is - reality itself in as much as it - is all there is - and anything else is just imagined or a crude human way of explaining the causes of things and events.

In the parable of the Sower - if you remember - God himself is the sower - walking down the streets of life’s busy events - through which the experience of its events God plants within us - seeds. And you remember that these seeds are also likened to that which becomes he light of our conscience - which light we should be using to see the events of this world by. If we ignore our conscience it is as if a light was lighted in the room but placed under a basket or behind the couch. The parable of the sower is in a few parts. The seed that falls on the road, the seed which falls by the rocky side of the road, the seed which falls among the weeds and brush further off the roadway - and the seed which falls into the fertile ground which is the furthest off the roadway.

Of these places where the seed fell - Jesus now lifts one place out and now begins to zoom in on it. The place where the seeds fell among the roadside weeds and thorn bushes.

Matt 13:24 (a general English translation)
The Lord begins by telling us that he is going to draw a allegorical parallel between the Kingdom of Heaven (the Providential governing of things and events) by using the sower and a field. Notice that in the parable of the sower just before this - the sower was walking down the pathway (roadway) throwing his seed. In this current parable the seed is sown into a field (more fitting to the real act). So we are to understand a similarity between the roadway and the field. The similarity is that while the roadway represents the things and events that happen to us as we go about the commerce of our daily lives - the field is a much broader overview. It is the place where all seed is sown. A garden. A farm field. So it is now that we are considering the same daily events - but in a total - all encompassing way. It is the earth or world as a whole which includes all time and all things and all events and all men.

The owner of the field is of course God. Since slaves are involved we can assume that the slaves were sent to do the sowing - just as they were sent to check on the field and as the harvesters would be later sent, and the reapers. This owner then is God who need only speak the word of his will - and it is carried out by intermediaries who perform it exactly and without question and need not know the purposes of what they are directed to do.

When the narration say that the seeds sprouted - it is talking of the small tender shoots that break the ground. When the text speaks of these shoots forming ‘heads’ the meaning is that the small tender leaves are breaking out from the shoot - and by the shape and color and suck - the servants can now see that weeds are also growing among the wheat shoots. But as yet - these small sprouts are small and it is difficult to tell which is the wheat and which is the weeds from among what is yet still tiny shoots.

Did not God sow good seeds? Of course he did. He always does. He does not sow any other kind. Interestingly - this seems to say that the cause, the reason, and the purpose - hidden within every and all events and things which take place on the stage of creation - is the good purposes of God. Also interesting is that the weed-seed is sown - when people sleeping - unaware - unconscious to reality and its events - and this seed is sown by what the text describes as ‘man’. The transliteration from the Greek is…

“An-enemy man this-did.” the owner states.

It is often our habit to imagine within the parable that the weed-seed is sown by disembodied evil spirits who arrange things and events in opposition to God. A war (if your will) between God and the evil spirits - played out on the stage of creation - and the prize is the souls of men. But this type of concept is not in the text. What the parable is saying is that all events and things of this created world - are always and everywhere under the total governing of God’s will. The evil - comes not into the world - but comes somehow and in someway from our own human nature. Exactly how that is I need not explain here. It is enough to know that the world of created things and events is always - under the direction of the Kingdom of God. As John said in the opening of his gospel “Without Him no-thing comes to-be.”

On the one hand it is difficult for us to look around at the world - and believe that all things and all events are totally under the good purposes and will of God! Yet it is very clear and from the most reliable source - that this is indeed the case and the truth. What is weed-seed is within - man - and always remains - within man. The battle is not “out there” in the world - it is totally - within. “Our battle is with principalities in high places.” refers to a spiritual battle deep within our soul. And all that comes to us personally on the stage of the world - is sent with one single purpose in God’s mind - to aide us in a battle which must be our own. Man has freewill and God will not violate that freewill. God uses all things and events of creation to form us (“Let us form man to our own image”) - in response to what he knows is within our heart and mind at every moment.

This only makes simple sense and indeed we already knew this when a child. God IS in total control of all things and all events - he is in total control of - our experiences. And it is through our daily experiences - that God is forming us. Do you remember the last parable when I said that the seeds thrown are the ‘word’ and the growing of them is within our conscience? How these ‘word’s come to us through the daily events of our life? - it is through our experiences that happen to us in life - that God forms us into his image. God uses as his tool the gentle persuasion or the hard hammer of life’s - experiences - to form us. And we already knew this - didn’t we.

So it we - collectively thought out all time - and individually - who are the field. It is within us - that the wheat (the good seed - the word) is sown and it is within us that the good seed and the weed-seed sprouts. The weed-seed is not sown within us from the outside. It is not what goes into a man that makes him unclear but rather what comes out of a man’s heart that makes that man unclean.

When the owner says that the shoots are too small and the difference to difficult to tell when so small - he is telling us that within the depths of ourselves (heart and mind) we ourselves (the slaves or servants in this case) are not able to root out only the bad and leave the good. The capability is - just not there - at least not at the depth of where these are just shoots. While we are able to do something about our sins when they are plain as day - we are not able to roots sin from our subconscious motives. This takes God himself to do.

As we explore this we are able to see more and more how this is so like what has been described so well in the Orthodox and Catholic churches - as the spiritual or mystical life. A life which is not really full of the unusual and phenomena - but rather is composed of - spiritual progress - a slow formation - done not by our own efforts at acetic practices but by the seemingly mundane daily events with which our own cooperation is needed.

While the first parable of the Sower described for us how God plants his word (seed) within us (through our personal experiences of daily life) and completes with Jesus telling us that the seed does not grow unless we visit our conscience and make the light of conscience that light by which we see the world… this further parable of the Weeds (introduced when the seed is choked in growth by the thorns) goes on to - focus in - zoom in - on this internal battle that does not take place outside but inside us.

Harvest time - is not one particular time. Different herbs and growth comes to full bloom (and time for harvesting) in its own time. So in reality somewhere that there is farm land - harvesting takes place over several weeks and according to what is ripe for harvesting. If one wishes to harvest all at once - then one must know the germination and span of time for each plant - and must plant the different seeds accordingly. Or - only plant one type of crop or just a few crops with the same maturation span. While the English translation speaks of the good seed as “wheat” it does so because the Greek word used is “grass” and the Hebrew meaning of that word ‘grass’ does not mean just wheat but rather encompasses all low plant like growth. The word may be used to indicate something restricted to one item such as wheat - but in general and a universal sense it means all low plant growth. In general, in early Hebrew, plant life is divided into three types. Grass (things that grow and remain low to the ground) bush (things that grow to the height of the waist or shoulders) and tree (things that grow taller than a man). So we should understand from the text that ‘harvest time’ seems to be meant in both the general overall way - and also in a particular way. There is one ‘harvest time’ but it is composed of many harvest times.

The instructions to the reapers is going to be that they - first - gather the grown weeds - and burn them. God is going to save the harvest of the good - by purging the field - of the bad.

We often think that the hard thins and uncomfortable things and events which come to us in daily life - may be a punishment from God regarding some sins we have. But Go’s view is that it is not a punishment - it is a purgation. It is not any evil which has come to us by way of some event in daily life - it is rather - a good - a purgation of the field - which intent is to root out the evil in us - and leave the remaining good.

Purgation in scriptures - often joined to the idea of fire - is uncomfortable to us. Yet it is our part in the cooperation - to have faith that what is taking place is totally under the control and guidance of Providence - and it is providing for us a means (which means we do not need to understand the workings of) a means by which what is unreal (remember I said that the evil was sown in unconsciousness - while not in consciousness of reality and its events) this un-reality is rooted out from our hearts.

If Providence is God providing all for us. If Providence is - reality. And the only reality there is - is Providence. Then sin - in its essence - is un-reality and self-providence.

It does us no good if the light within our conscience - is unreality. It does us no good if the Word is a reality other - than the reality which surrounds us. And it is the - experience - of reality - that has meaning and purpose for us. We as humans are not just another ‘thing’ among other things.

If things and events have any meaning and purpose for us - then what is important about things and events is not themselves - but rather their meaning and purpose within our experience of reality - which is to say - within the Will and Providence of God.

The “end of the world” then that scriptures speaks of is primarily - not - an end in the sense of an annihilation of the matter and material and events of this world - but and end rather through Providentially arranged purgations it is the end of being governed by things and events of the world in a way that has no reality to their true meaning and purpose.

Now let me turn the subject for a moment.

It makes no sense for a man who raised within the English language and knows little of Russian, to go out and try to make a speech in Russian. And so it is that my little posts are intended for those who are familiar with the language of the One Holy Catholic church.

Allow me to make two substitutions in order to better say something.

Allow me for the moments to call the entire church (Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Byzantine, Albanian .. Etc… seven sacraments) - by the Greek term of - catholic. Allow me to capitalize it - Catholic. Universal.

Allow me to call Providence, the Will of God, the Kingdom of God, God’s action within the world that theology calls ‘economy’ - reality. And let me capitalize that also - Reality.

There is no conflict within the Catholic church - that God is the author of - reality. In fact a summation of Catholic teaching is that God is the only creator and what gets created is only created by God. If God does NOT create it - it does not come to-be.

Scripture is a human witness to God’s actions within the world. Scripture is a witness to - economy. Providence - and its actions in the world. One of the most notable aspects of scriptures is the fact that what can seem like ordinary human events in history - is actually a plan - guided - and unfolding - set into motion and actively progressed by God himself. In fact scripture sets forth that the ‘ordinary reality’ of the world - IS Providence - although we perhaps do not know it.

If someone lack knowing about the Catholic doctrine of Providence (as that is easy to do today because early church writings take knowledge of Providence for granted a known by the Christian - after all - it is the main subject about which acts the New Testament records) - then it is easy to believe that the Will of God we are to do - is to train and learn and love the doctrines and precepts of the church and live them in application to ourselves. We all do this to a greater or lesser extent. But in the absence of a sense of Providence, this “Will of God” can seem to be - a set of rules - intellectual arguments - acetics - all treated really as if the means for behavioral modification. In the worst case this is fundamentalism where evil is a threat from “outside” in the world and the battle seems to be in ridding the world of evil. This tends to a division of groups. Us - and - them. A concept where some are saved and some are lost - according to which group. This is decidedly a not-catholic view when applied on a social level but to show that would take more space and this is a post. “I am of Paul, I am of Peter, I am of Apollo.. Etc..” Paul himself has already told us in epistles that this division is no good - a misapplication of what it is to be - Christs’.

As I said before - if one is unaware of the churches doctrines on Providence - and unaware of the importance of daily Providence and our cooperation with it - one might as well be leaving for the lobby anytime the main character of the play takes the stage.

Who is the sower? It is God.

What is the field? It is within us. Within us collectively as humans (across all time and history) and within us individually - right at this moment.

What is sown? - the seeds of the only reality that there is - Providence. The creative - word.

How is it sown? - it comes to us by way of the daily events which we experience. All - tailored exactly for us according to how God entirely and fully knows our heart And mind - at the moment - and what he determines to be the best event to apply to us - in his part of forming us into his own image.

How do these seeds grown within us? Planted in our spirit (mind and heart) they exist together with our own mistaken view of how the world works and the purpose or its events. Our own mistaken view - one prompted and prompting - self-providence over God’s Providence.

Where is the ‘good ground’ in which the good seed can grow to - a hundred fold? It is within our conscience. It is when we use what Providence itself has planted within our conscience - as the light be which we see - the world that we experience.

Can we ourselves - root out the weeds? No. We can’t. It is beyond our ability (the capability of a human) to root out only the bad and leave the good. We can only go - so far - in the doctoring or therapy (whatever you want to call it) of our own human spirit. We can change our behavior - but we alone can not change the root - of the subconscious (remember I said the weed-seed is sown when and where - we are not-conscious).

How is the weed-seed rooted out? It is rooted out by Providence. That means through the arrangement and total guidance of - these same exactly daily events and experiences that God creates and brings to us. It is the Will - the actions - the economy - of God which does the rooting out. We need not understand it - we only need to do our part in cooperation with it for it to be effective. We do ourselves a great mis-service - when we try to second guess why this event happens to us or that event happens to us. God seldom shares with us the why and the wherefore of his rooting out - because we are just not capable of understanding much about it. It reaches to the depths of our subconscious.

One does not need to posses all the knowledge of medical surgery or medications that the doctor has - in order to be successfully treated by a doctor. In fact we are warned in a friendly way several times in the gospels not to second guess the purposes and goals of Providence (“Rabbi - for whose sins was this man born blind - his own or his parents? “ and Jesus replies that it was for neither of these second-guessed reasons.).

Before the field is cellared and becomes a good harvest - comes the purgations. The reapers are told to - first - gather the weed-seed plants - and burn them. In our parable it is to say that certain events that happen to us have the intention of reaching into our spirit (mind and heart) and especially to the subconscious levels (sown in our not-conscious) to be ripped out and burned at the same time. It is clear that this will be uncomfortable to us. And now we can plainly see how it is that some spiritual writers talk of the world (that internal governing of things and events which is not referenced to God) - that world-government of dead fate, dead destiny, and necessity - we can now see how some spiritual writers describe the end of the world to be a purgation by fire. And if we take that in a literal and fundamentalist way - we shall wrongly expect some cataclysmic event to take place at some future date and time of history by which the material and substance of the created world will come to an end.
The ‘end’ does not bring with it - God. But anytime God comes to us he himself is the occasion of the end of that governing of the world which only exists within us as a misconception of reality and Providence. This is how Paul can tell us in epistle that the “end times” are already upon us. The presence of Christ - to the Christian - IS - the end of that world government - and the beginning of the world government known as Providence. The Kingdom of God. The Word. The Will of God - and the person of the resurrected Jesus Christ.

One last mention in this long post which will surely bring me trouble…

Christianity - to be Christian - to live day by day in a bit of conscious awareness that events and duties which come to us each day are sent to us by a living God who knows what is in our hearts and minds at any moment - and who send these events in order to plant seeds - purge weeds - and form us more and more into himself - a spiritual way of life which the King James version rightly translates within the Acts as - “the Way“…

Makes Christianity - a mystery religion. That is - a religion which primary effectiveness resides not in dogma (although dogma may be an expression of it) and not in intellectual concepts (although theology and philosophy may be and expression of it) and not in ascetics (although ascetics may be and expression of it) - but rather in the mystery of an experience of union between God and the Christian.

All other aspects of the Christian religion - are secondary to and take their meaning from - the central fact of the union and cooperation between - God himself and the Christian. A mystery - meaning the fact and experience of this union defies human analysis. It is not something known about - it is something known only in the experience of it.

This - experience - is not ‘in’ unusual phenomena. It is not ‘in’ scriptures. It is not ‘in’ the practice of ascetics or intellectually correct discussion of doctrines - nor is it ‘in’ the events that Providence arranges for us each day - it is only ‘in’ - the experience of - the “good ground”.

It is only had with the experience of and within - our own conscience. As a ‘light’ given by which to live our next - daily events. It only grows more sure and in clarity - as we spend time with it - and if we - use it to define - reality. And when the storms come (moments of purgation) - we stick to it.

In this light - purgation (the gathering and burning of the weeds) is not a punishment - it is a good done to us by God. It takes the premise that we are already fallen. We are already away from reality (the reality that Providence is the only real governing of creation that exists - and there is no other governing of creation) . We are NOT saints - but we shall be formed into saints not by own actions of intelligence nor logic nor simply by obedience to any rules that exist but rather from this - mystery of union - and cooperation with daily Providence.

This is how I see certain things and I am aware that my posts are difficult to read and that I am not a good writer. I welcome discussion (even passionate discussion) that are more than claims of heresy or use the “Latin!” card. My apologies for typos which I do not have the time to correct.

-ray


The Parable of The Weeds

The last time I wrote a little something - it was about the Parable of the Sower, today we will looked around that, just a bit before and after.

The gospels are very connected. There is a flow - a continuity - through out. We tend to read them and understand them in chapters - and they are not in chapters. Chapters are a devise and divisions created by early translators and as such they lead us to assume what the early translators assumed. Anyone first coming to scriptures should come by way of reading with these divisions but there comes a point when one should realize that these divisions are an aide not included in the originals as such can assist us or hurt us.

Most of the time, when we read the gospels, there is an underlying unity to portions which, on the surface, seem to deal with different subjects. Therefore we can sometimes see that some parables which seem to have little relationship to each other - are actually two ways to express the same thing. It is a little like peering into a diamond by rotating it in your hand and looking into the diamond through several of its cut facets. What we see through each facet - is the same internal fire. This is typical of the gospels in more than just the parables. There is also a typical Jewish was of (what I call) telescoping about scriptures both old and new testaments. That is that the writer will treat the same thing in several ways (an underlying continuity) and then one of the sections will be lifted out - and displayed much fuller. If one is not aware of this than one can run on assuming that the writer has moved to a new subject and be totally unaware that the write is - still - treating the - same subject in a much fuller way.

A prime example of this telescoping takes place in the very first books of the Old Testament. The very first book is really very small… it is the treatment of the seven days of creation. The second book is generally called the Second Creation stoy and the seven days is generally called the First Creation story by translators. Within the events of the seven days the even of the creation of Adam is a small thing that seems to happen on the sixth day “Let us form man in our own image..” and the forming of man goes on for only a few lines followed by the rest on the seventh day. In this way we could say that the forming of man is only one sixth of that book (the sixth day). Yet that event of the sixth day is lifted out - and becomes the second book (which is generally thought of as a second creation story). We are all familiar with it - it is the narration of Adam and Even in the garden. When we read in a continuous way we tend to think that the events of Adam and Eve took place after the seventh day - but according to Hebrew literary style - the narration of Adam and Eve and the garden are first mentioned on the sixth day as a “forming” - and next the writer take the event of that ‘forming’ and telescope right into it. It is as if we stood far off at first and watched thing happen - and among the things that take place - there is one more important than the others and we now zoom in on that event to look at it in much fuller detail. There is always a continuity of symbols when this is done - yet if not understood in the original writer’s language (and how many of us can read the Hebrew?) this - flowering - this closer detail - can be missed. And so it is that we should understand that the events of the Garden should be thought of as being contained in the previous narration of the few linens begun by “Let us form man in our own image.” And we should further come to understand that the ‘second creation story’ is not a ‘second creation’ but rather a fuller, closer, and more detailed look at the most important event that took place on the sixth day. So too the next book (dealing with Cain and able) is a lifting out of the narration of the garden its most important event (the fall, the eating of the apple) and treating the reality of that event anew in a much wider and more detailed way.

So too does Our Lord often speak this way in the gospels. And we should not be surprised, in fact we should expect it - being a Jew of Jews, a Hebrew among Hebrews, an embodiment of scripture (or shall we say that scripture is an embodiment of him) - it would rather be the surprise if Jesus did not follow the continuity of scripture and - broke its seams and fabric.

So I will at first beging by backing up - just before the parrbles that dealt with ‘the Sower’ - and then I shall go forward to just what follows that same parable and show how the parrable of the Weeds is just such a telescoping - a lifting out - taking the most important thing from the long parable of the sower - and zooming in - expanding - that most important thing.

There is an over riding aspect of scriptures of which we can say is the summation of all scriptures. It is Providence. If one understand very little as to what Providence is - then reading scriptures is a bit like watching a play and getting up to go to the lobby to make a phone call any time the main actor comes on stage. Without every seeing or hearing the main actor of a play - we shall indeed “see the play” and come away with an idea of what the play was about - but it shall not be the same “about” that the writer of the play intended. It is only, once we experience the main character of the play - the one around whom all events take their meaning - that we really enter into the play and understand its spirit.

Providence. We seldom thing of ‘it’ as anything more than those occasional events in life which we wish we could change but cannot. When someone dies unexpectedly and leaves behind a human tragedy in his remaining family - we sometimes have nothing to say in the face of the in-understandable - than to comfort the widow with the words “We have to believe that it was God’s will. All things happen for a reason. It was God’s will. It was just - his time.” We regulate ‘God’s will’ to the moments in which it was impossible for us to assert - our own will.

The meaning of Providence can well be seen in the two words that both the Hebrews and Greeks used but our English has only one words for. World. The first use indicates the world as governed by Providence - and the second use indicates the world as governed by fate, destiny, devoid of God being its cause and attributing the running of the things of the world to the self-necessity of created things and events. The first meaning of “world” is the world which goes on forever and in reality is all there every was or shall be. It is the world without end. The second World is a governing which - does end. It is that way of life which the scriptures say will come to an end - as the end times. Neither use - indicates an end of annihilation of things or events - but of a change in the governing of these very same things and events.

For Jesus of the gospels… God’s will was predominant. His will was always the cause and the inner meaning of all events that Jesus experienced. In today’s words - God’s will - was the every day reality that Jesus experienced. His Father’s will was the very substance - of reality. Providence, which takes place every day around us no matter if we know it or not - is the Will of God Jesus was always taking about.

At times - in the gospels - it seems as if Jesus and his disciple were talking a different language with each other. Yet we know that they all spoke a common Hebrew or a form of Aramaic. And the reason is that while Jesus always experienced reality and events as an expression of the Will of God (and knew the inner meaning of events) the disciple most often filtered reality into themselves based upon - fate - destiny - or what is sometimes called the necessity of the created world. Of view of the world and its events as having a necessary and predictable action and reaction based rules gained through human experience. And so when news was received about the death of Lazareth - Jesus says that Larareth is ‘sleeping’ and the disciples go on and on about the death of Lazareth and the necessity of the funeral and the grief of the family etc.. - all mindful of those things which necessary follow upon the death of someone. Only when they draw Jesus back into the conversation does Jesus make it clear that he is coming from a view that death - is a spiritual condition. A separation from God - and that has not happened to Lazareth. And so we experience in the gospels that although Jesus and the disciples are using the same words - they are each coming from a different mindset of what reality - is in cause and meaning.

The parable of the Sower follows upon the preceding subject of doing the will of God. Jesus had just been comparing what it is like not to be doing the will of his father - and someone comes and says his mother and brothers are outside looking for him. The term brothers here is used in a way of discipleship. Jesus is the rabbi and his disciples are his own group. Together they are a brotherhood. We still use the term today when we call nuns ’sister’ and we call monks and male members of a religious society ’ brother’. And Jesus takes the occasion of when (whoever it was that came to where he was speaking and announced within the hearing of the crowd “Your mother and brothers are outside “ - Jesus says “Who is my mother and my brother ?- anyone who does the Will of my Father - is my mother, my brother - my family“.

So, as is often the case, the subject is The Will of God. Providence. This governing of things and events - which governing was also called the Kingdom of God. The kingdom. That in which the governing of the king - takes place. Far more than just a physical boundary of a country - it is within each person who abides by the governing of the king. Jesus had been speaking about if we are cooperating with Providence or not. If the Will of God is what is governs us - or not.

We can easily understand the Kingdom of God when Jesus claims that it is his own presence. At the start of his public work - Jesus begins with the announcement of his own presence “The Kingdom of God is upon you.” - because we can easily see that within Jesus he himself is governed by the Will of God. It is - here - present - right in the midst of everything else that is going on. Surrounded by it as a fish is surrounded by water - we can not see it as we can see a table or a tree - because it is a governing. The real cause and purpose and meaning - of all things and all events. IT is - reality itself in as much as it - is all there is - and anything else is just imagined or a crude human way of explaining the causes of things and events.

In the parable of the Sower - if you remember - God himself is the sower - walking down the streets of life’s busy events - through which the experience of its events God plants within us - seeds. And you remember that these seeds are also likened to that which becomes he light of our conscience - which light we should be using to see the events of this world by. If we ignore our conscience it is as if a light was lighted in the room but placed under a basket or behind the couch. The parable of the sower is in a few parts. The seed that falls on the road, the seed which falls by the rocky side of the road, the seed which falls among the weeds and brush further off the roadway - and the seed which falls into the fertile ground which is the furthest off the roadway.

Of these places where the seed fell - Jesus now lifts one place out and now begins to zoom in on it. The place where the seeds fell among the roadside weeds and thorn bushes.

Matt 13:24n (a general English translation)
The Lord begins by telling us that he is going to draw a allegorical parallel between the Kingdom of Heaven (the Providential governing of things and events) by using the sower and a field. Notice that in the parable of the sower just before this - the sower was walking down the pathway (roadway) throwing his seed. In this current parable the seed is sown into a field (more fitting to the real act). So we are to understand a similarity between the roadway and the field. The similarity is that while the roadway represents the things and events that happen to us as we go about the commerce of our daily lives - the field is a much broader overview. It is the place where all seed is sown. A garden. A farm field. So it is now that we are considering the same daily events - but in a total - all encompassing way. It is the earth or world as a whole which includes all time and all things and all events and all men.

The owner of the field is of course God. Since slaves are involved we can assume that the slaves were sent to do the sowing - just as they were sent to check on the field and as the harvesters would be later sent, and the reapers. This owner then is God who need only speak the word of his will - and it is carried out by intermediaries who perform it exactly and without question and need not know the purposes of what they are directed to do.

When the narration say that the seeds sprouted - it is talking of the small tender shoots that break the ground. When the text speaks of these shoots forming ‘heads’ the meaning is that the small tender leaves are breaking out from the shoot - and by the shape and color and suck - the servants can now see that weeds are also growing among the wheat shoots. But as yet - these small sprouts are small and it is difficult to tell which is the wheat and which is the weeds from among what is yet still tiny shoots.

Did not God sow good seeds? Of course he did. He always does. He does not sow any other kind. Interestingly - this seems to say that the cause, the reason, and the purpose - hidden within every and all events and things which take place on the stage of creation - is the good purposes of God. Also interesting is that the weed-seed is sown - when people sleeping - unaware - unconscious to reality and its events - and this seed is sown by what the text describes as ‘man’. The transliteration from the Greek is…

“An-enemy man this-did.” the owner states.

It is often our habit to imagine within the parable that the weed-seed is sown by disembodied evil spirits who arrange things and events in opposition to God. A war (if your will) between God and the evil spirits - played out on the stage of creation - and the prize is the souls of men. But this type of concept is not in the text. What the parable is saying is that all events and things of this created world - are always and everywhere under the total governing of God’s will. The evil - comes not into the world - but comes somehow and in someway from our own human nature. Exactly how that is I need not explain here. It is enough to know that the world of created things and events is always - under the direction of the Kingdom of God. As John said in the opening of his gospel “Without Him no-thing comes to-be.”

On the one hand it is difficult for us to look around at the world - and believe that all things and all events are totally under the good purposes and will of God! Yet it is very clear and from the most reliable source - that this is indeed the case and the truth. What is weed-seed is within - man - and always remains - within man. The battle is not “out there” in the world - it is totally - within. “Our battle is with principalities in high places.” refers to a spiritual battle deep within our soul. And all that comes to us personally on the stage of the world - is sent with one single purpose in God’s mind - to aide us in a battle which must be our own. Man has freewill and God will not violate that freewill. God uses all things and events of creation to form us (“Let us form man to our own image”) - in response to what he knows is within our heart and mind at every moment.

This only makes simple sense and indeed we already knew this when a child. God IS in total control of all things and all events - he is in total control of - our experiences. And it is through our daily experiences - that God is forming us. Do you remember the last parable when I said that the seeds thrown are the ‘word’ and the growing of them is within our conscience? How these ‘word’s come to us through the daily events of our life? - it is through our experiences that happen to us in life - that God forms us into his image. God uses as his tool the gentle persuasion or the hard hammer of life’s - experiences - to form us. And we already knew this - didn’t we.

So it we - collectively thought out all time - and individually - who are the field. It is within us - that the wheat (the good seed - the word) is sown and it is within us that the good seed and the weed-seed sprouts. The weed-seed is not sown within us from the outside. It is not what goes into a man that makes him unclear but rather what comes out of a man’s heart that makes that man unclean.

When the owner says that the shoots are too small and the difference to difficult to tell when so small - he is telling us that within the depths of ourselves (heart and mind) we ourselves (the slaves or servants in this case) are not able to root out only the bad and leave the good. The capability is - just not there - at least not at the depth of where these are just shoots. While we are able to do something about our sins when they are plain as day - we are not able to roots sin from our subconscious motives. This takes God himself to do.

As we explore this we are able to see more and more how this is so like what has been described so well in the Orthodox and Catholic churches - as the spiritual or mystical life. A life which is not really full of the unusual and phenomena - but rather is composed of - spiritual progress - a slow formation - done not by our own efforts at acetic practices but by the seemingly mundane daily events with which our own cooperation is needed.

While the first parable of the Sower described for us how God plants his word (seed) within us (through our personal experiences of daily life) and completes with Jesus telling us that the seed does not grow unless we visit our conscience and make the light of conscience that light by which we see the world… this further parable of the Weeds (introduced when the seed is choked in growth by the thorns) goes on to - focus in - zoom in - on this internal battle that does not take place outside but inside us.

Harvest time - is not one particular time. Different herbs and growth comes to full bloom (and time for harvesting) in its own time. So in reality somewhere that there is farm land - harvesting takes place over several weeks and according to what is ripe for harvesting. If one wishes to harvest all at once - then one must know the germination and span of time for each plant - and must plant the different seeds accordingly. Or - only plant one type of crop or just a few crops with the same maturation span. While the English translation speaks of the good seed as “wheat” it does so because the Greek word used is “grass” and the Hebrew meaning of that word ‘grass’ does not mean just wheat but rather encompasses all low plant like growth. The word may be used to indicate something restricted to one item such as wheat - but in general and a universal sense it means all low plant growth. In general, in early Hebrew, plant life is divided into three types. Grass (things that grow and remain low to the ground) bush (things that grow to the height of the waist or shoulders) and tree (things that grow taller than a man). So we should understand from the text that ‘harvest time’ seems to be meant in both the general overall way - and also in a particular way. There is one ‘harvest time’ but it is composed of many harvest times.

God does not purge us all at once because we could not stand it and we would beg him to stop. And so he pourges us little by litlle and to the extent which we can edure it.

The instructions to the reapers is going to be that they - first - gather the grown weeds - and burn them. God is going to save the harvest of the good - by purging the field - of the bad.

We often think that the hard thins and uncomfortable things and events which come to us in daily life - may be a punishment from God regarding some sins we have. But Go’s view is that it is not a punishment - it is a purgation. It is not any evil which has come to us by way of some event in daily life - it is rather - a good - a purgation of the field - which intent is to root out the evil in us - and leave the remaining good.

Purgation in scriptures - often joined to the idea of fire - is uncomfortable to us. Yet it is our part in the cooperation - to have faith that what is taking place is totally under the control and guidance of Providence - and it is providing for us a means (which means we do not need to understand the workings of) a means by which what is unreal (remember I said that the evil was sown in unconsciousness - while not in consciousness of reality and its events) this un-reality is rooted out from our hearts.

If Providence is God providing all for us. If Providence is - reality. And the only reality there is - is Providence. Then sin - in its essence - is un-reality and self-providence.

It does us no good if the light within our conscience - is unreality. It does us no good if the Word is a reality other - than the reality which surrounds us. And it is the - experience - of reality - that has meaning and purpose for us. We as humans are not just another ‘thing’ among other things.

If things and events have any meaning and purpose for us - then what is important about things and events is not themselves - but rather their meaning and purpose within our experience of reality - which is to say - within the Will and Providence of God.

The “end of the world” then that scriptures speaks of is primarily - not - an end in the sense of an annihilation of the matter and material and events of this world - but and end rather through Providentially arranged purgations it is the end of being governed by things and events of the world in a way that has no reality to their true meaning and purpose.

Now let me turn the subject for a moment.

It makes no sense for a man who raised within the English language and knows little of Russian, to go out and try to make a speech in Russian. And so it is that my little posts are intended for those who are familiar with the language of the One Holy Catholic church.

Allow me to make two substitutions in order to better say something.

Allow me for the moments to call the entire church (Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Byzantine, Albanian .. Etc… seven sacraments) - by the Greek term of - catholic. Allow me to capitalize it - Catholic. Universal.

Allow me to call Providence, the Will of God, the Kingdom of God, God’s action within the world that theology calls ‘economy’ - reality. And let me capitalize that also - Reality.

There is no conflict within the Catholic church - that God is the author of - reality. In fact a summation of Catholic teaching is that God is the only creator and what gets created is only created by God. If God does NOT create it - it does not come to-be.

Scripture is a human witness to God’s actions within the world. Scripture is a witness to - economy. Providence - and its actions in the world. One of the most notable aspects of scriptures is the fact that what can seem like ordinary human events in history - is actually a plan - guided - and unfolding - set into motion and actively progressed by God himself. In fact scripture sets forth that the ‘ordinary reality’ of the world - IS Providence - although we perhaps do not know it.

If someone lack knowing about the Catholic doctrine of Providence (as that is easy to do today because early church writings take knowledge of Providence for granted a known by the Christian - after all - it is the main subject about which acts the New Testament records) - then it is easy to believe that the Will of God we are to do - is to train and learn and love the doctrines and precepts of the church and live them in application to ourselves. We all do this to a greater or lesser extent. But in the absence of a sense of Providence, this “Will of God” can seem to be - a set of rules - intellectual arguments - acetics - all treated really as if the means for behavioral modification. In the worst case this is fundamentalism where evil is a threat from “outside” in the world and the battle seems to be in ridding the world of evil. This tends to a division of groups. Us - and - them. A concept where some are saved and some are lost - according to which group. This is decidedly a not-catholic view when applied on a social level but to show that would take more space and this is a post. “I am of Paul, I am of Peter, I am of Apollo.. Etc..” Paul himself has already told us in epistles that this division is no good - a misapplication of what it is to be - Christs’.

As I said before - if one is unaware of the churches doctrines on Providence - and unaware of the importance of daily Providence and our cooperation with it - one might as well be leaving for the lobby anytime the main character of the play takes the stage.

Who is the sower? It is God.

What is the field? It is within us. Within us collectively as humans (across all time and history) and within us individually - right at this moment.

What is sown? - the seeds of the only reality that there is - Providence. The creative - word.

How is it sown? - it comes to us by way of the daily events which we experience. All - tailored exactly for us according to how God entirely and fully knows our heart And mind - at the moment - and what he determines to be the best event to apply to us - in his part of forming us into his own image.

How do these seeds grown within us? Planted in our spirit (mind and heart) they exist together with our own mistaken view of how the world works and the purpose or its events. Our own mistaken view - one prompted and prompting - self-providence over God’s Providence.

Where is the ‘good ground’ in which the good seed can grow to - a hundred fold? It is within our conscience. It is when we use what Providence itself has planted within our conscience - as the light be which we see - the world that we experience.

Can we ourselves - root out the weeds? No. We can’t. It is beyond our ability (the capability of a human) to root out only the bad and leave the good. We can only go - so far - in the doctoring or therapy (whatever you want to call it) of our own human spirit. We can change our behavior - but we alone can not change the root - of the subconscious (remember I said the weed-seed is sown when and where - we are not-conscious).

How is the weed-seed rooted out? It is rooted out by Providence. That means through the arrangement and total guidance of - these same exactly daily events and experiences that God creates and brings to us. It is the Will - the actions - the economy - of God which does the rooting out. We need not understand it - we only need to do our part in cooperation with it for it to be effective. We do ourselves a great mis-service - when we try to second guess why this event happens to us or that event happens to us. God seldom shares with us the why and the wherefore of his rooting out - because we are just not capable of understanding much about it. It reaches to the depths of our subconscious.

One does not need to posses all the knowledge of medical surgery or medications that the doctor has - in order to be successfully treated by a doctor. In fact we are warned in a friendly way several times in the gospels not to second guess the purposes and goals of Providence (“Rabbi - for whose sins was this man born blind - his own or his parents? “ and Jesus replies that it was for neither of these second-guessed reasons.).

Before the field is cellared and becomes a good harvest - comes the purgations. The reapers are told to - first - gather the weed-seed plants - and burn them. In our parable it is to say that certain events that happen to us have the intention of reaching into our spirit (mind and heart) and especially to the subconscious levels (sown in our not-conscious) to be ripped out and burned at the same time. It is clear that this will be uncomfortable to us. And now we can plainly see how it is that some spiritual writers talk of the world (that internal governing of things and events which is not referenced to God) - that world-government of dead fate, dead destiny, and necessity - we can now see how some spiritual writers describe the end of the world to be a purgation by fire. And if we take that in a literal and fundamentalist way - we shall wrongly expect some cataclysmic event to take place at some future date and time of history by which the material and substance of the created world will come to an end.
The ‘end’ does not bring with it - God. But anytime God comes to us he himself is the occasion of the end of that governing of the world which only exists within us as a misconception of reality and Providence. This is how Paul can tell us in epistle that the “end times” are already upon us. The presence of Christ - to the Christian - IS - the end of that world government - and the beginning of the world government known as Providence. The Kingdom of God. The Word. The Will of God - and the person of the resurrected Jesus Christ.

One last mention in this long post which will surely bring me trouble…

Christianity - to be Christian - to live day by day in a bit of conscious awareness that events and duties which come to us each day are sent to us by a living God who knows what is in our hearts and minds at any moment - and who send these events in order to plant seeds - purge weeds - and form us more and more into himself - a spiritual way of life which the King James version rightly translates within the Acts as - “the Way“…

Makes Christianity - a mystery religion. That is - a religion which primary effectiveness resides not in dogma (although dogma may be an expression of it) and not in intellectual concepts (although theology and philosophy may be and expression of

Dear Ray,

You are an excellent writer.

It is just that some of us are afraid to engage you in conversation for fear of tampering with copyright issues!

Alex