“Then having sent away the multitudes, he came into the house, and his disciples came to him, saying: ‘Expound to us the parable the cockle of the field.’ Who made answer and said to them: ‘He that soweth the good seed, is the Son of man. And the field, is the world. And the good seed are the children of the kingdom. And the cockle, are the children of the wicked one. And the enemy that sowed them, is the devil. But the harvest is the end of the world. And the reapers are the angels. Even as the cockle therefore is gathered up, and burnt with fire: so shall it be at the end of the world. The Son of man shall send his angels, and they shall gather out of this kingdom all scandals, and them that work iniquity. And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the just shine as the sun, in the kingdom of their Father. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.’”
When Jesus sends the multitude away with the bait of parables, He desires to draw out of themselves the hearers. Where the Pharisees left, not finding any opportunity to catch Him in His discourse, His disciples, their appetites whetted by the small sample of the parable, then desired to feast on the truth: “Hear, O my son, and receive my words, that years of life may be multiplied to thee” (Proverbs 4:10). “Because to you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 13:11), and so to you, Theophila, He is an open book, if you will walk with Him: “Because the words which thou gavest me, I have given to them” (John 17:8). It is an invitation to be confident with Jesus, that His love will not deceive you, but unveil the truth of His merciful love more as you grow in love of Him: “Till the day break, and the shadows retire, I will go to the mountain of myrrh, and to the hill of frankincense” (Canticle 4:6). Jesus then applies the title Son of Man to Himself, itself being an Aramaic idiom for “human being,” showing Jesus’ delight in being amongst His people: “Behold the tabernacle of God with men, and he will dwell with them” (Apocalypse 21:3). All things are His: “All things are delivered to me by my Father” (Matthew 11:27), including the field of the world, in which he sows, by grace, spiritual children of the Father, little ones that know His merciful love and love Him in turn: “I confess to thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them to little ones” (Matthew 11:25). Now, when Jesus says, “children of the wicked one,” he does not mean that the devil made them, for all people are beautiful gifts, with human nature being something magnificent, but the enemy, in twisting it and polluting it with successful temptations, then yields “children” that walk in his footsteps: “You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you will do” (John 8:44). The ultimate end of sin is hatred, which is the mission of the devil, whereas the kingdom of God is a kingdom of love, and so there are children of love, who, when fully grown, are saints, and there are children of the devil that sin, who, when fully grown, hate. There are then, two harvests, because Jesus elsewhere says, “The harvest indeed is great, but the labourers are few. Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he send labourers into his harvest” (Luke 10:2), for in the first is the call to pick hearts that are ripe for conversion and plant them in healthy soil, then tending to their cultivation with love, the second is the harvest of the fruits of that love, which is the final judgment, which is denoted here. The angels will come and separate those who loved well like ripe, red, beautiful apples, and those who did not; even among those who did love, apples spoiled with insincerity or sin will not be taken as good fruit. Then, as weeds that do nothing but ruin the beauty of the garden, those that failed to love will be removed from the same garden: “He that loveth not, knoweth not God: for God is love” (1 John 4:8). The weeds are first separated before being cast into the fire, which shows that the fire of tribulation separates the two, for in the fires of hardship, justice shines: “For gold and silver are tried in the fire, but acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation” (Ecclesiasticus 2:5), whereas those that do not love lose all human luster in these times, their selfishness becoming manifest: “He that hateth his brother, is in darkness, and walketh in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth; because the darkness hath blinded his eyes” (1 John 2:11). A Gloss calls the “scandals” those that put the stumbling block of scandal before others: “Let us not therefore judge one another any more. But judge this rather, that you put not a stumblingblock in your brother’s way” (Romans 14:13); “Thou shalt not speak evil of the deaf, nor put a stumblingblock before the blind: but thou shalt fear the Lord thy God, because I am the Lord” (Leviticus 19:14), and those that do iniquity all other sinners, for it is one thing to simply reject the Beloved by choosing sin, but it is yet another to reject the Beloved and keep another from His love as well: “You yourselves have not entered in, and those that were entering in, you have hindered” (Luke 11:52), interfering with the potential love story that could unfold in someone else’s life. There is also a point concerning the angels being those that bind the weeds and put them into the fire, that God does not do this. When He sows, He does so Himself, drawing His children towards Him with the joy of a father, whereas when He is rejected, He in His heartbreak: “Every eye shall see him, and they also that pierced him” (Apocalypse 1:7) would not be able to stand looking at the ones He loves going to their reward. Where there is weeping denotes the heat and smoke of those who lived inflamed with passion, being led by their bodily desires like a beast on a chain: “They shall return at evening, and shall suffer hunger like dogs: and shall go round about the city” (Psalm 58:7), and where there is gnashing of teeth is the extreme cold of heartlessness: “Men shall be… without affection” (2 Timothy 3:2-3), neither of which are the beauty to which you are called: “Thy cheeks are beautiful as the turtledove’s, thy neck as jewels” (Canticle 1:9), which is the perfection of love: “Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). If you consider, Theophila, those that love as the world loves and those who love with the divine art of love, the saintly shine like stars against the darkness, their warmth being a comfort in the cold of this world’s tribulations. Ah, but how few of these there are! “If the just man shall scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?” (1 Peter 4:18). In this life they are examples, in the life to come they are to shine with the magnificence of their love: “But they that are learned” in the art of love “shall shine as the brightness of the firmament: and they that instruct many to justice, as stars for all eternity” (Danield 12:3), more radiant than the sun at noon: “Shew me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest, where thou liest in the midday” (Canticle 1:6).