Church Fathers Commentary Matthew 13:24-30

"Another parable set he before them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man that sowed good seed in his field: but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares also among the wheat, and went away. But when the blade sprang up and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. And the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst thou not sow good seed in thy field? whence then hath it tares? And he said unto them, An enemy hath done this. And the servants say unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But he saith, Nay; lest haply while ye gather up the tares, ye root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather up first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them; but gather the wheat into my barn." — Matthew 13:24-30 (ASV)

St. John Chrysostom: In the previous parable, the Lord spoke to those who do not receive the word of God; here, He speaks of those who receive a corrupting seed. This is the scheme of the Devil, who always seeks to mix error with truth.¹

St. Jerome: He also set forth this other parable, like a rich householder refreshing his guests with various dishes, so that each person, according to their own constitution, might find food suitable for them. He did not say "a second parable," but "another." For if He had said "a second," we could not have expected a third; but "another" prepares us for many more.

Remigius of Auxerre: Here He calls the Son of God Himself the kingdom of heaven, for He says, The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field.

St. John Chrysostom: He then points out the nature of the Devil's snares, saying, While men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares in the midst of the wheat, and went away. He shows here that error arose after the truth, as the course of events indeed testifies: the false prophets came after the Prophets, the false apostles after the Apostles, and the Antichrist after Christ.

For unless the Devil sees something to imitate and someone to ambush, he does not attempt anything. Therefore, because he saw that this person bears fruit a hundredfold, this one sixty, and this one thirty, and that he was not able to carry off or choke what had taken root, he turns to other insidious practices, mixing in his own seed—a counterfeit of the true seed—and thereby deceives those who are prone to be deceived.

So the parable speaks not of a different kind of seed, but of tares, which bear a strong resemblance to wheat. Furthermore, the Devil's malice is shown in this: he sowed when everything else was completed, so that he might do the greatest harm to the farmer.

St. Augustine of Hippo: He says, While men slept, which means that while the leaders of the Church were neglectful, and after the Apostles had entered the sleep of death, the Devil came and sowed among the faithful those whom the Lord, in His interpretation, calls the children of the evil one. But we should inquire whether this refers to heretics or to Catholics who lead evil lives. The fact that He says they were sown among the wheat seems to indicate that they were all of one communion.²

However, since He interprets the field to mean not the Church but the world, we may well understand this to refer to heretics, who are mixed with the good in this world. For those who live wrongly within the same faith might better be considered chaff than tares, since the chaff shares a stem and a root with the grain. Schismatics, in turn, may be more aptly compared to ears of grain that have rotted, or to straws that are broken, crushed, and thrown out of the field.

Indeed, it is not necessary that every heretic or schismatic be physically severed from the Church, for the Church bears many who do not defend their false opinions so publicly as to attract the attention of the multitude; when they do, they are expelled. So when the Devil had sown various evil errors and false opinions upon the true Church—that is, he scattered errors wherever Christ's name had gone before—he himself remained rather hidden and unknown, for the parable says, And went his way. In fact, as we learn from His own interpretation, the Lord may be understood to have signified by the name "tares" all stumbling blocks and those who work iniquity.

St. John Chrysostom: In what follows, He draws a more particular picture of a heretic with the words, When the blade had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared. For heretics at first keep themselves in the shadows; but when they have been given free rein for a long time, and when people have engaged with them in discussion, then they pour out their venom.

St. Augustine of Hippo: Alternatively, when a person begins to be spiritual and to discern between things, they then begin to see errors. For they judge whatever they hear or read, determining whether it departs from the rule of truth. But until they are perfected in these same spiritual matters, they might be disturbed that so many false heresies have existed under the Christian name. From this follows the verse: And the servants of the householder came and said to him, "Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?"³

Are these servants, then, the same as those whom He later calls "reapers"? Since in His explanation of the parable He explains that the reapers are the angels, and no one would dare to say that the angels were ignorant of who had sown the tares, we should instead understand that the "servants" here are the faithful.

And it is no wonder if they are also signified by the good seed, for the same thing can have different symbolic meanings according to its different applications. For example, speaking of Himself, He says that He is the door and that He is the shepherd.

Remigius of Auxerre: They came to the Lord not with the body, but with the heart and the soul's desire. From Him they gather that this was done by the Devil's cunning, from which it follows, And he said to them, "An enemy has done this."

St. Jerome: The Devil is called "an enemy who is a man" because he has ceased to be God; and in the ninth Psalm it is written of him, Arise, O LORD; let not man prevail (Psalm 9:19). Therefore, let the one who is set over the Church not sleep, lest through his carelessness the enemy should sow tares in it—that is, the dogmas of the heretics.

St. John Chrysostom: He is called "the enemy" on account of the losses he inflicts on humanity. For the Devil's assaults are made upon us, though their origin is not in his enmity toward us, but in his enmity toward God.

St. Augustine of Hippo: And when the servants of God knew that it was the Devil who had contrived this fraud—whereby, finding he had no power in open warfare against a Master of such a great name, he introduced his fallacies under the cover of that name itself—the desire might readily arise in them to remove such people from human affairs if the opportunity were given. But first, they appeal to God's justice about whether they should do so: The servants said, "Do you want us to go and gather them?"

St. John Chrysostom: In this, observe the thoughtfulness and affection of the servants. They hasten to root up the tares, thus showing their anxiety for the good seed. For this is their only concern: not that anyone should be punished, but that what was sown should not perish. The Lord's answer follows, But he said, "No."

St. Jerome: For room for repentance is left, and we are warned not to hastily cut off a brother, since one who is today corrupted by an erroneous dogma may grow wiser tomorrow and begin to defend the truth. Therefore, it is added, Lest while you are gathering the tares, you also uproot the wheat with them.

St. Augustine of Hippo: In this, He makes them more patient and tranquil. For He says this because the good, while they are still weak, need to be mixed with the bad in some respects, either to be tested by them or to be greatly stimulated and drawn to a better course by comparison with them. Or perhaps the wheat is said to be uprooted if the tares are gathered from it because many who are at first tares will later become wheat. Yet they would never achieve this commendable change if they were not patiently endured while they were evil. In this way, if they were uprooted, the wheat that they would have become in time—if they had been spared—would be uprooted in them.⁴

Therefore, He forbids that such people be taken out of this life, lest in the effort to destroy the wicked, those among them who would have turned out good are also destroyed. This is also so that the benefit that accrues to the good from mixing with the wicked, even against their will, is not lost. But this removal can be done at the proper time, when, at the very end, there is no more time for a change of life or for advancing to the truth by comparison with the faults of others. Therefore, He adds, Let both grow together until the harvest—that is, until the judgment.

St. Jerome: But this seems to contradict the command, Put away from yourselves the evil person (1 Corinthians 5:13). For if uprooting is forbidden, and we are to wait patiently until the harvest, how are we to cast anyone out from among us? But between wheat and tares (which in Latin we call lolium), as long as it is only a blade and before the stalk has produced an ear, there is a very strong resemblance, with little or no difference to distinguish them.

The Lord, then, warns us not to pass a hasty sentence on something ambiguous, but to reserve it for His judgment, so that when the day of judgment comes, He may cast out from the assembly of the saints not on suspicion, but on the basis of manifest guilt.

St. Augustine of Hippo: For when anyone among the Christians in the Church is found in such sin as to incur an anathema, this is done—where there is no danger of schism—with tenderness, not for his uprooting, but for his correction. But if he is not conscious of his sin and does not correct it through penitence, he will, of his own choice, leave the Church and be separated from her communion. This is why, when the Lord commanded, Let both grow together until the harvest, He added the reason, saying, Lest while you gather up the tares, you also uproot the wheat with them.

This sufficiently shows that when that fear has ceased and the safety of the crop is certain—that is, when the crime is known to all and is acknowledged as so detestable as to have no defenders, or at least none who might cause a schism—then the severity of discipline is not idle. Its correction of error is all the more effective because the observance of love had been all the more careful.⁵

But when the same infection has spread to a large number at once, nothing remains but sorrow and groans. Therefore, let a person gently reprove whatever is in their power. What is not, let them bear with patience and mourn over with affection, until He from above corrects and heals. Let them wait until the harvest to root out the tares and winnow the chaff. The multitude of the unrighteous, however, should be confronted with a general reproof whenever there is an opportunity to say something among the people.

This is especially true when a scourge from the Lord provides an opportunity, and they feel they are being punished for what they deserve. For then, the calamity of the hearers opens their ears submissively to the words of their reprover, since a heart in affliction is always more prone to the groans of confession than to the murmurs of resistance.

And even when no tribulation is upon them, if the occasion arises, a word of reproof is usefully spent on the multitude; for when its members are separated, the multitude tends to be fierce, but when they are together as a body, it tends to mourn.

St. John Chrysostom: The Lord said this to forbid any killing. For we ought not to kill a heretic, seeing that this would introduce a never-ending war into the world. Therefore, He says, Lest you also uproot the wheat with them. This means that if you draw the sword and put the heretic to death, it must follow that many of the saints will fall with them.

By this, He does not forbid all restraint upon heretics—such as cutting off their freedom of speech or breaking up their synods and confessions—but only forbids that they be put to death.

St. Augustine of Hippo: This, indeed, was at first my own opinion: that no one was to be driven by force into the unity of Christ. Instead, a person was to be led by discourse, contended with in debate, and overcome by argument, so that we would not have people feigning to be Catholics whom we knew to be declared heretics.⁶

But this opinion of mine was overcome not by the words of those who contradicted me, but by the examples of those who demonstrated the contrary in fact. For the effect of those laws, in the enacting of which princes serve the Lord in fear, has been so good that now some are saying, "We desired this long ago; but now, thanks be to God who has given us the opportunity and cut off our excuses for delay."

Others say, "We have long known this to be the truth, but we were held by a kind of old habit; thanks be to God who has broken our chains."

Still others say, "We did not know this was true and had no desire to learn it, but fear has driven us to pay attention to it; thanks be to the Lord who has banished our carelessness with the spur of terror."

Others say, "We were deterred from entering by false rumors, which we would not have known to be false if we had not entered; and we would not have entered if we had not been compelled. Thanks be to God who has shattered our complacency with the scourge of this pressure and has taught us by experience how empty and false were the things that lying rumor had reported about His Church."

And others say, "We thought it was of no importance in what communion we held the faith of Christ, but thanks be to the Lord who has gathered us from our division and has shown us that it is consistent with the unity of God that He should be worshiped in unity."

Let the kings of the earth, then, show themselves to be servants of Christ by publishing laws on Christ's behalf.

But who among you wishes for a heretic to perish, or even to lose anything? Yet the house of David could have had peace in no other way than by the death of Absalom in the war he waged against his father. This was despite his father giving strict commands to his servants to save him alive and unhurt, so that on his repentance there might be room for a father's affection to pardon. What, then, remained for David but to mourn over him when he was lost, and to console his own domestic affliction with the peace that Absalom's death had brought to his kingdom?⁷

Thus our Catholic mother, the Church, when she gains many by the loss of a few, soothes the sorrow of her motherly heart, healing it with the deliverance of so many people. Where, then, is that slogan which these people are accustomed to cry out: "It is free for all to believe"? To whom has Christ done violence? Whom has He compelled? Let them consider the Apostle Paul. Let them acknowledge in him Christ first compelling and afterward teaching; first striking and afterward comforting. And it is wonderful to see him, who entered the service of the Gospel by the force of a bodily affliction, laboring in it more than all those who are called by word alone (1 Corinthians 15:10).ⁱ

Why, then, should the Church not compel her lost sons to return, when her lost sons compelled others to perish?

Remigius of Auxerre: It follows, And in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, "First gather the tares and bind them in bundles to be burned." The harvest is the season of reaping, which here designates the day of judgment, in which the good are to be separated from the bad.

St. John Chrysostom: But why does He say, First gather the tares? So that the good should have no fear that the wheat might be uprooted with them.

St. Jerome: When He says that the bundles of tares are to be thrown into the fire and the wheat gathered into barns, it is clear that heretics and hypocrites are to be consumed in the fires of hell, while the saints, who are represented here by the wheat, are received into the barns—that is, into heavenly mansions.

St. Augustine of Hippo: It may be asked why He commands more than one bundle or heap of tares to be formed. Perhaps it is because of the variety of heretics, who differ not only from the wheat but also among themselves. Each individual heresy, separated from communion with all the others, is designated as a "bundle." Perhaps they even begin to be bound together for burning when they first sever themselves from the Catholic communion and start to have their own independent church. If so, it is the burning, not the binding into bundles, that will take place at the end of the world.⁸

But if this were so, there would not be so many who become wise again and return from error to the Catholic Church. Therefore, we must understand the binding into bundles to be what will happen in the end, so that punishment will fall on them not indiscriminately, but in proportion to the obstinacy and willfulness of each separate error.

Rabanus Maurus: And it should be noted that when He says, sowed good seed, He intends the good will that is in the elect. When He adds, an enemy came, He implies that we should keep watch against him. When He patiently allows the tares to grow up, saying, An enemy has done this, He recommends patience to us. When He says, Lest perhaps in gathering the tares..., He gives us an example of discretion. When He says, Let both grow together until the harvest, He teaches us long-suffering. And finally, He impresses justice upon us when He says, Bind them in bundles to be burned.

1. Hom., xlvi
2. Quaest in Matt., q. 11
3. Quaest in Matt., q. 12
4. Quaest. in Matt., q. 12
5. Cont. Ep. Parm., iii. 2
6. Ep. 93, 17
7. Ep. 185, 32 et 22
8. Quaest in Matt., q. 12