The cockle in our lives

By Barbara A. Schoeneberger

Kiss of Judas, Fecamp Psalter

Wikimedia Commons

The Gospel for the Fifth Sunday After Epiphany in the Extraordinary Form is the parable of the man who sowed good seed in his field, but his enemy came in at night and sowed cockle seed over it. Now what kind of person would do such a thing? The farmer’s crop not only provided his living, others needed it for survival too, and future crops depended on the seed. The malicious act of a hateful heart would hurt many.

This is exactly what Satan is about. Create as much pain and suffering as possible in ways that have far reaching effects. Discourage all kindness. Choke the light of Christ out from the midst of God’s children. Seize their water and make them shrivel and die, all the while masquerading as one of the authentic stalks of grain until the very last minute when the reality of being a fake naturally emerges.

Cockle and wheat look alike when growing until the heads mature. At harvest the cockle is uprooted, bound and burned. The wheat is harvested and stored in the barn, protected from the elements, safe. We can see the obvious spiritual reference to the Last Judgment here, but let’s back up a bit and consider the time of the two growing along side each other. If we identify ourselves with the wheat, what is God showing us here of how we are to live in this very imperfect world? Why not just rip up the cockle wherever it appears so that it can’t hurt any of the wheat?


Continue reading at Barb's blog  Suffering With Joy.

Meditate on the Last Things

By Ruth Ann Pilney

Autumn Leaves by Millais (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons).

Watching the beautiful autumn leaves fall reminds me of the temporality of earthly life. An excerpt from Bambi, a children’s novel by Felix Salten, is a dialogue between two oak leaves clinging to a branch high above the others.

     “So many of us have fallen off tonight we’re almost the only ones left on our branch,” said one. 

     “You never know who’s going to go next,” said the other.

     “Can it be true,” said the first leaf, “can it really be true, that others come to take our places when we’re gone and after them still others, and more and more?”

     “It really is true,” whispered the second leaf.  “We can’t even begin to imagine it. It’s beyond our powers.”

     After a period of silence, the first leaf said quietly to herself, “Why must we fall?”

     The second leaf asked, “What happens to us when we have fallen?  Do we feel anything, do we know about ourselves down there?”

     “Who knows?  Not one of all those down there has ever come back to tell us about it.”

     “Let’s not talk any more about such things,” said the first leaf.

     “No, we’ll let it be.”

Many people eschew discussing death, but at this time of year the Church encourages us to ponder such things: death and judgment, heaven and @#!*% , the end of the world, the second coming of our Lord and Savior, and the establishment of the Reign of God.  We wait in joyful hope!


Ruth Ann originally posted this at her blog From the Pulpit of My Life.