First Reading (Wis 12:13.16-19). God has both the knowledge and the power to root out evil people if he so desired. This reading talks of God’s mercy, and how we ought to imitate it.

Second Reading (Rom 8:26-27). The Holy Spirit helps us to pray when we can’t find the words to express what is on our minds and hearts.

Gospel (Mt 13:24-43). The church, and indeed the world, is like a field in which wheat and weeds grow side by side until they are separated at the harvest time.
The Church always seeks to reflect the goodness, truth and beauty of Christ, to be people of holiness and virtue but we are also sinners in need of God’s mercy.
We mustn’t despair. The world is a mixture of light and darkness, good and evil. Wheat and weeds grow side by side in the same person, indeed, in ourselves.
But all is not lost – there is good there too. No one understood this better than Jesus. Even in the twelve apostles whom he guided carefully for three years, the weeds persisted, yet he never despaired of them.

Pope Francis reminds us:
“…the Church is called on to pour its mercy over all those who recognize themselves as sinners, who assume responsibility for the evil they have committed, and who feel in need of forgiveness. The Church does not exist to condemn people but to bring about an encounter with the love of God’s mercy…. I like to use the image of a field hospital to describe this ‘Church that goes forth’…… Mercy is the very foundation of the Church’s life, and the Church has an endless desire to show mercy.”