A Homily for the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Readings: Wisdom 12:13, 16-19  Romans 8:26-27  Matthew 13:24-43

A simile likens one thing to another, but this also implies that the two differ. Otherwise, there would not be two.

Jesus says that “The kingdom of heaven may be likened to a man who sowed good seed in his field” (Mt 13:24), but as St. Augustine pointed out, people are more variable than plants.

There is this difference between people and real grain and real weeds, for what was grain in the field is grain and what were weeds are weeds. But in the Lord’s field, which is the church, at times what was grain turns into weeds and at times what were weeds turns into grain (Sermon, 73A.I).

The saint concludes by cautioning us to concentrate upon ourselves rather than others, adding, “and no one knows what they will be tomorrow.”

In agriculture, weeds remain themselves, but in life the souls whom we identify as “the lost and the found” quite often switch places. 

Vice President JD Vance’s new memoir perfectly illustrates this reality. Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith (2026) tells the story of an Appalachian boy raised on the fringes of American fundamentalism. While not exactly church-going, his family certainly believed that God intended the sacred Scriptures to be interpreted literally. 

Fundamentalism is a new phenomenon, but young Vance thought it to be synonymous with the Christian faith. As he understood it, one could be faithful to God’s word only by denying even the possibility of evolution. So, for the young Vance, time was not measured in millennia, and the world was only some 6,000 years old. 

Eventually, this intransigence led a maturing Vance to reject, at least interiorly, the faith of his family. By the time he deployed as a Marine to Iraq, JD Vance would have called himself an atheist. That “he would have called” is important to note. Mr. Vance no longer identified as a Christian, but he did not stop asking about the meaning of life. And though he was a willing participant in it, the Marine culture of “survive and imbibe” left him thirsting for something more.

Mr. Vance famously went off to college at Ohio State, finishing in two years. He then entered Yale Law School, where “atheist,” or perhaps the gentler “agnostic,” was the default denomination. But if the “survive and imbibe” culture of the military failed to give meaning to life, Mr. Vance found the path of elites—“grow rich and thrive before you die”—even less satisfying. He continued to search.

Did Vance become a weed when he abandoned the faith of his family? Or would it be better to say that he was a stalk of wheat making its way toward the sun? 

The question matters when we consider those who currently deny their faith and our fellowship, many of whom we dearly love. They stand outside the faith, but have they closed themselves off from faith? In rejecting a set of propositions, have they also turned away from the experience of faith, from encountering God in this life? 

Yes, people do turn away from God, the mystery from which we emerge and to which we journey. But given that he pursues us like a wounded lover, is that rejection easily accomplished, or does it take some real effort on our part?

Mr. Vance was not in a pew when he encountered a passage from St. Augustine that showed him how mistaken his first approach to the Christian faith had been. Centuries before fundamentalism became a reality, the great doctor of the church insisted that the mysteries of faith will always elude our comprehension precisely because they are God’s truth. 

Remember, fundamentalism can infect Catholics as well. Augustine argued that we must guard against rejecting insights simply because they seem to contradict our own understanding of the truth, a grasp that is always limited. 

God’s truth, Augustine insisted, can take care of itself. He wrote:

In matters that are obscure and far beyond our vision, even in such as we may find in Holy Scripture, different interpretations are sometimes possible without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such a case, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth undermines this position, we too fall with it. That would be to battle not for the teaching of Holy Scripture but for our own, wishing its teaching to conform to ours, whereas we ought to wish to conform ours to that of Sacred Scripture (On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis, I.18).

It took time, but the former Marine and reluctant litigator began to realize that he had been defending the wrong cause. And doing so had led him to stand apart from the fellowship we call the church. 

Is something similar happening in the lives of those whom we love, who have abandoned our fellowship but cannot truly disengage from the search for faith? If rather than being weeds, they are wheat searching for the sun, what should our response to them be? 

And what of those who willingly identify as weeds, who actively reject the faith? Do we and they owe something to each other? The great gift of Mr. Vance’s memoir is his injunction that neither group should disengage from the other. We need to respect each other, listen to one another, ask questions. 

As bright as he undoubtedly is, Mr. Vance suggests that faith is never simply an intellectual journey. Our minds never stand apart from the communities into which we are born or migrate. People do not lose or gain their faith from an argument, though they might indeed say this to themselves. 

Ultimately, Mr. Vance suggests, it is the company that we keep, the soil in which we choose to implant ourselves—to return to our Lord’s simile—that truly matters.

Recalling the gospel singing that surrounded his great-grandmother on her deathbed, Mr. Vance writes, 

Christianity wasn’t just a “belief” to us. It wasn’t a judgement we arrived at after evaluating the evidence. It was a practice, a way of life. It connected us to our ancestors and our progeny. We listened to our grandparents tell the same stories they had once heard from theirs. 

Then, fighting what appeared to be the good fight, Mr. Vance, as he puts it, chose to “divorce” himself from his family’s faith. 

Now he reminds us: 

Why people like me ultimately lose their faith is a hard question to answer confidently. This is especially true given the nature of religious belief, where family pressure, emotional attachments, and rationality intersect in psychologically complicated ways.

Similes have limits. In dirt, wheat and weeds remain forever distinct. Not so in life, says St. Augustine. In life, we must exercise great caution in labeling. We must continue to love those from whom we differ, respectfully listening to them. 

Let’s give JD Vance the last word, as he urges all of us to seek out good soil.

If I could go back and give advice to the younger version of myself, it would be to resist that supposedly unavoidable drift into unbelief. It’s not inevitable, even if it seems that way sometimes. Be intentional in the social circle you keep; seek out friends who keep you honest and interested in life’s great questions. Surround yourself with people and institutions that recognize how flawed we are as human beings yet still insist that you reach for something higher.

The Rev. Terrance W. Klein is a priest of the Diocese of Dodge City and author of Vanity Faith.