Gospel readings about “wailing and grinding of teeth” were always cause for some theological excitement on the playground. As a third grader in Catholic school, these words confused and terrified me.

One of the best homilies I have heard on this passage—and one of the few I recall from my grade school—concerns the gravity of Christ’s language. As memory serves, our school priest had received reports from recess of a dodgeball match modeled on Matthew’s text. The game itself was harmless: students divided into teams of “seeds” and “weeds;” losers were relegated to a “fiery furnace.” The teachers (and the priest) were mostly amused; impressed, I think, that the gospel’s content made it to the playground in any form. But there persisted that school week some mean chatter—some eschatological speculation of increasing nastiness—about who among us would, in the final harvest, actually be spared. A few students began to imagine the eternal “wailing and grinding of teeth” of a few others, and things quickly went to tears.

Our priest’s response during school Mass was humbling. For all the interpretations available to us, he said, this gospel passage was least of all a call to judgment (not, at least, to human judgment). He encouraged us to consider the field in Matthew’s parable not only in terms of the world but also (and primarily) in terms of ourselves. We are, all of us, good soil and bad, flower and weed. Approached this way, Matthew’s severe language is easier to grasp. But it remains a challenge. If, like Dante, we are to take God seriously as love itself, we should expect God to be serious about rooting out the parts of our lives that are not loving.

The real charity of this passage is to be found in what the weeds obscure, literally and figuratively: the good soil and the good seed. Both of these are gifts. Luckily, a good God provides us with both.