St. Pius X Roman Catholic Parish

16^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

As early as a few days ago, but it happens frequently, I was wrestling internally with something, and I wanted to bring my struggle to God. So I came over here to be in His Presence (really trying to “check all the appropriate boxes” to maximize success), and I sat down in front of Him. I opened my heart to Him (so I thought) and tried to pray. And my mind went blank. Maybe not blank, but the roundabout in my brain was so clogged with traffic that nothing was moving, even though traffic was running smoothly before I sat down.

Don’t you hate when that happens? I remember when I was about 15 years old and I wanted to tell a girl in my class that I liked her. I had rehearsed the conversation a hundred times in my head beforehand, was sure I knew what I wanted and needed to say- but facing her, I blanked, babbled, lost my natural charm and probably (obviously) my chance to confess my feelings. Now here I am, almost 30 years later, doing the same thing in front of God.

But you know, even sitting there suddenly mute and at a loss for words, I could feel my anxiety melting slowly away. The traffic in the roundabout in my brain that usually serves me well began to flow again. Because when we sit in silence, or when we can only offer a sigh, a tear, or a frustrated “Lord, help,” the Spirit takes that raw, unpolished human emotion and shapes it into the perfect prayer of a son or daughter to the Father. Even the great Apostle Paul struggled with this- “We do not know how to pray as we ought.” But instead of telling us to try harder, he points us to a beautiful, hidden reality.

Baptism is more than just a “welcome to the Catholic Church”. It is a permanent tangling of our soul with the Holy Spirit. From that moment on, your soul and God’s Spirit became intertwined. Like the roots of the weeds and the wheat in today’s Gospel, you and the Holy Spirit became structurally, permanently inseparable.

When we pray, the Holy Spirit doesn’t push our soul aside and say “leave this to the Pro.” He prays with us, from within us, taking up our confusion, fear, longing, and love, and carrying it deeper than our words could ever go. He doesn’t do it for us in the sense that He takes over- but only He is able to take our sighs, our confusion, and even our silence, and carry them into the loving conversation of the Trinity, keeping our prayers ‘in the family’, son or daughter talking to God the Father while Christ our brother is beside us.

It is no wonder that we feel confusion, distraction, anxiety, or weakness even in the Presence of God- grace and weakness (like the wheat and weeds) are tangled together in us. We come before the Lord wanting Him to fix us quickly, cleanly, and completely. But instead of ripping through the soil of our hearts, He enters it patiently. He works from within. He knows what is wheat, He knows what is weed. And He knows how to save what is good without destroying what is fragile.

We see only the mess: the distractions, the impatience, the old habits, the stubborn sins, the wandering thoughts. But He sees the wheat too. He sees the grace that is growing quietly, the faith that is still alive, the love that is trying to reach Him, even when it comes out awkwardly or silently. So the answer is not to stop praying until the field is clean. The answer is to keep coming before Him and let Him tend the field.

What do we actually do with our tangled roots and our messy weeds? The world tells us we have to fix ourselves. It tells us to dig, to yank, to make noise, to analyze, and to solve. But in the spiritual life, the most powerful thing we can do is often the exact opposite: we can choose silence. Silence is not the absence of prayer; it is the highest form of it.

Think of a field. A farmer doesn’t grow crops by constantly digging up the dirt to see how they’re doing. The growth happens in the quiet, dark silence of the earth. When we quiet our minds and enter into silence before God, we are essentially saying: ‘Lord, I am going to stop trying to untangle myself. I am going to sit still, and I am going to let You walk through the field of my heart.’

When we are silent, we finally give the Holy Spirit room to breathe in us. We stop drowning out His whispers with our own anxious words. In that sacred quiet, the Father looks at you—His baptized child—and He begins to tend to your soil. He doesn’t come up with a weedwhacker to violently rip everything. He comes with the gentle hand of a Master Gardener. In the silence, He begins to soothe your anxieties. He begins to gently untie those tight knots of worry that you’ve been pulling at for years.

In silence, we don’t have to perform. We don’t have to explain our weeds to Him. He already knows. We simply sit in His presence and allow Him to love us, weeds and all. Think of the person who comes to confession again and again with the same weakness, embarrassed that they are still struggling with it. They may be tempted to think God is tired of them, or disappointed that they have not become holy fast enough. But the Lord is not impatient like that. He is like a father teaching a child to walk: He does not scold the child for falling; He reaches down, lifts them up, steadies them, and invites them to take another step. That is God’s patience with us. He does not pretend the weeds are not there, but neither does He give up on the wheat that is still growing.

So this week, do not be afraid of silence or brain fog that often comes with prayer. Do not be afraid if prayer feels awkward, distracted, or unfinished. Come before the Lord anyway. Sit with Him, let the Holy Spirit pray in you when you do not know how to pray as you ought. Let the Father look upon the field of your heart with patience and mercy. And trust that, even when all you can see are the weeds, He sees the wheat. He sees what is good. He sees what is growing. And with the gentle patience of the Master Gardener, He will bring it to harvest.