A God of second chances

Sunday 19 July 2026

Lectio Divina:*

Wisdom 12:13-19 Psalm 86(85)

Romans 8:26-27 Matthew 13:24-43 The Last Judgement – fresco paining by Giotto di Bondone (1267-1337). Source is here.

Meditatio:

‘Let anyone with ears listen!’  (Matthew 13:43)

Commentary:

In today’s first reading from the Book of Wisdom - one of the books included in the Catholic and Orthodox biblical canon - we encounter a God who offers second chances to those who stray. He is a God who never ceases to seek out people and invite them into his Kingdom. As the reading tells us about God, ‘you judge with mildness’ (Wisdom 12:18). Some translations render this phrase as, ‘you govern us with great lenience’.

This is a message we need to hear clearly. In the past, many Catholics were burdened by fear and shaped by distorted images of God as primarily stern and punitive. Yet the Scriptures repeatedly reveal a God whose power is expressed through mercy, patience, and compassion.

This theme is reinforced in today’s Gospel from Matthew, which continues Jesus’ teaching in parables. Explaining the parable of the wheat and the weeds to his disciples, Jesus says:

The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man;  the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one. (Matthew 13:37–38)

And least we be complacent, he goes on to say: 

Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers,  and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.  Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen! (Matthew 13:40–43)

These words can and should make us uncomfortable. The image of a patient and loving God sits alongside the reality of divine judgment and the possibility of eternal separation from God. Jesus warns that those who definitively reject God and persist in grave evil place themselves outside the life of the Kingdom. Matthew returns to this theme elsewhere in his Gospel (8:12; 13:50), and echoes of it can also be found in Luke (16:23–24).

The wider context of Wisdom 12 helps us to understand how mercy and judgment belong together. Earlier in the chapter, the author describes practices that cry out for judgment:

Those who lived long ago in your holy land you hated for their detestable practices, their works of sorcery and unholy rites, their merciless slaughter of children, and their sacrificial feasting on human flesh and blood.  These initiates from the midst of a heathen cult, these parents who murder helpless lives, you willed to destroy by the hands of our ancestors, so that the land most precious of all to you might receive a worthy colony of the servants of God. (Wisdom 12:3–6)

Do any alarm bells ring for us today? Before assuming that we are among the wheat while others are the weeds, it may be wiser to ask what weeds are quietly growing in our own spiritual garden. The parable invites us not only to reflect on the world around us but also to examine our own hearts.

When we look honestly within, we often discover a mixture of wheat and weeds. We may recognise the choking growth of guilt, resentment, anger, fear, sadness or anxiety. One fruitful way of approaching this parable is to acknowledge that grace and sin continue to struggle within every human heart.

In daily life we encounter both good and evil in ourselves and in others. It is not always easy to distinguish between them, and it can be tempting to rush to judgment, especially regarding the behaviour or motives of others. While some things we dismiss too quickly may prove to have hidden value, Jesus also cautions us not to ignore the reality of genuine evil.

The parable therefore calls us to three things:

• patience without complacency;
• mercy without moral blindness; and
•  hope without presumption.

God delays judgment and allows room for conversion. He is powerful yet merciful, patient, yet just. His justice ensures that evil will not have the final word, while his mercy continually offers the possibility of repentance and new life. We are called to pray and hope for the salvation of all people, entrusting every person to the mercy of God. Yet the final judgment belongs to God alone.