A couple years ago I had a brief encounter with a most interesting man.
Dominic was a very affable fellow.
And he struck up a conversation with me.
We quickly found that we had a few things in common.
He’d spent his teen years in Connecticut
As had I.
He’d moved to NY, and often took the subway out to Shea
Stadium to see the Mets.
I used to take the train from Hartford
and go to Shea Stadium when my favorite team,
the Cincinnati
Reds, came to NY.
He had considered going to law school – I had.
We were also different in many ways.
Nick, as he preferred to be called,
Was probably twenty years younger than me.
And much blacker than me.
He’d spent a number of years in the Marine Corps.
And had spent many of those years in Europe
and the Middle East.
I was never in the military, and have spent only brief
vacations in Europe.
Nick was clearly an intelligent person.
He was quite well spoken, well read, and well educated.
He told me that he’d recently written a book about a
black soldier.
And he pulled a copy from his duffle bag to show me.
He said it was available on Amazon.
He spoke Spanish and at least a bit of German.
When I referred to someone as a “good chap”,
Nick launched into a strong British accent and began to
tell me about his time in London.
What struck me most about Nick,
What I can’t forget about Nick,
Was the odd circumstance of our meeting.
We met in a vacant field over by where New
York Avenue crosses I-395.
A few of us from St Joseph’s
were over there.
Feeding the homeless.
I didn’t notice him at first.
But Nick was there in the field, mixed in among the
crowd.
Standing there with the other homeless.
Well, not all were homeless.
Some have a place to live.
But they can’t afford an apartment and food too.
A few were elderly poor.
Some were people just temporarily down on their luck.
Others had alcohol or drug addictions.
Probably most had mental health issues to some degree.
It wasn’t until I heard a little commotion behind me
That I turned and saw Nick.
He was good-naturedly bantering with a couple others in
the soup line.
Those others seemed to have been on the verge of an
argument.
But Nick had diffused the situation with his humor.
And that’s when our conversation began.
It continued off-and-on as the food was distributed.
A few sentences here, a few comments there.
A joke, a story.
And then the crowd began to drift away from the field.
Nick was telling me about London
When he noticed that his group was already heading down
the block.
He said, Gotta run, where the crowd goes, the fool must
follow.
And he was gone.
But I keep thinking – he should never have been in that
cluster in the field.
Maybe that’s why I can’t forget him.
With a superficial look at the crowd that sprang up that
day in that field
Any one of us might have taken it for a field of weeds.
Whether the weeds represent the bad, among the good
wheat.
Or whether the weeds represent the worthless, among the
valuable wheat.
We’re in no position to judge the wheat from the weeds.
That’s why Jesus tells us in his parable to let them grow
together.
Our view is too often a superficial view.
Nick might have easily been mistaken for one of the weeds.
Who’s to say there were any weeds in that field
that day.
Even when we think we’re looking carefully and closely
We can only see so far beyond the purely superficial.
Only God can see into the heart.
So, whenever we catch ourselves slipping into the trap of
judging others,
Let’s pull ourselves back to our proper role.
The role of giving the assistance, and setting the
example
That will help the Spirit spread the Kingdom
of Heaven right here
on earth.
Anything is possible in the Kingdom
of Heaven.
If we do our part
Perhaps the Spirit will touch any true weeds and
transform them into true wheat.
And when Jesus comes with his angels at the close of the
age
The Spirit will have already completed his work.
And the angels will find no weeds to destroy.
Tuesday of the 17th Week in Ordinary Time
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