Mt 13: 36–43
Cluj-Napoca, 28th of July 2026
Carles Gil i Saguer
Father Genreal of the Order of the Pious Schools
Dear young friends,
There is a phrase I like to repeat whenever we read Sacred Scripture: a text taken out of context ends up becoming a pretext. The Gospel we have just heard is a good example. The liturgy has proclaimed to us Jesus’ explanation of the parable of the wheat and the weeds, but not the parable itself. However, to fully understand these words, we need to go back a few verses.
There we find a phrase that sheds light not only on today’s Gospel but also on the theme of this Piarist Youth Meeting. When the servants want to pull up the weeds immediately, Jesus replies, Let both grow together until the harvest. The verb used in the Gospel literally means to grow together.
When I read that expression, I immediately thought of the theme of your gathering: We grow together. It is not simply a nice phrase for a few days of fellowship. It is a Gospel-centered way of understanding life. God could have chosen to save us one by one, each on his or her own path. Yet, from the very beginning, he does exactly the opposite: he calls a people, gathers disciples, sends them out two by two, and brings the Church into being as a community. God never helps a person grow by isolating them; he helps them grow by bringing them into relationship with others.
That is why Christian growth is never solely a personal project. It always has a communal dimension. You have come here from many parts of Europe. Some of you have grown up in very vibrant Christian communities; others come from environments where believing means going against the grain. Some of you have a clearly defined vocation; others are still searching for it with sincerity. However, none of you has come here to become a copy of someone else. Christian communion never consists in standardization, but in discovering that we can be profoundly different and, at the same time, deeply united because we share the same root: Jesus.
That is the Church. And that is also what we call synodality today. Walking together does not mean that we all think alike, but rather that we allow ourselves to be led together by the Holy Spirit toward a truth that none of us fully possesses. Calasanz understood this logic in an extraordinary way. He never wanted to form only brilliant students; he wanted to form people capable of living as brothers and sisters. He knew that intelligence without communion can build walls, while a community where Christ is at the center helps each person grow far more than they could on their own.
Perhaps that is why Jesus’ words are so beautiful. He does not simply say, Grow, but Grow together. Not just side by side, but thanks to one another. Many of the most important things God will do in your lives will bear the name of a specific person: someone who will listen to you, someone who will correct you with love, someone who will believe in you when you yourselves stop doing so, someone who will awaken your vocation. And perhaps, without even realizing it, you will become that person for someone else. This is how God makes his Kingdom grow.
But the parable invites us to discover a second, even deeper meaning. That growing together does not happen only among us; it also happens within us. Here, Jesus demonstrates an extraordinarily realistic understanding of the human heart. Seemingly contradictory dimensions coexist within each person. Generosity and selfishness, trust and fear, selflessness and the need for recognition, the sincere desire to give of oneself and the constant temptation to withdraw into oneself, all grow together. He never divides humanity into good and bad. The true boundary between good and evil does not run through nations, cultures, or generations; it runs through the heart of every person.
Perhaps growing up also means ceasing to worry about that inner tension. When we are young, we often think that maturing means no longer having doubts, contradictions, or struggles. However, the Gospel shows us a much truer path. Christian maturity does not consist in ceasing to struggle, but in learning to live through that struggle with peace. Not because good and evil are equivalent, but because we have discovered that God never ceases to work within us. Peace does not come from feeling perfect, but from trusting that He continues to make the good seed grow, even when we can only see the weeds.
We live in a culture fascinated by immediacy. We expect quick results, immediate answers, and visible changes. Even in our spiritual lives, we often seek spectacular transformations. The Gospel reminds us that authentic growth always follows the rhythm of a seed. The most important things happen slowly, almost always in silence. The roots grow long before the fruit appears.
And that is precisely why Jesus concludes the parable by speaking of light. He says that the righteous will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of the Father. The word used in the Gospel does not simply mean to emit light, but to allow a light that was already present to become visible. It is the image of the sun when the clouds no longer hide it. The light is not created at that moment; it simply appears.
This is how the Gospel understands the Christian vocation. It does not consist in creating a light that we do not possess, but in allowing the life of Jesus to shine through more and more in our own lives. And that light is never meant for us alone. Just as no one lights a lamp to gaze at it for their own sake, neither does Jesus illuminate our hearts solely for our own comfort. He illuminates us so that others may find hope, so that others may regain confidence, so that others may discover a path and come to believe that God continues to walk with his people. The light of Jesus reaches its full beauty when it also illuminates the lives of others.
That is why the judgment Jesus speaks of should not inspire fear in us. God remains the central figure: the very same God who never stopped believing in us, even when we stopped believing in ourselves. That is the Christian hope. We do not believe that good will prevail because human beings will become good enough. We believe that good will prevail because Christ has risen. And that difference changes the entire story.
I’d like to close by leaving you with a question to reflect on throughout this week:
What if the maturity that Jesus wants to give you this week isn’t about having fewer struggles, but about learning to trust more in the midst of them?
Dear young friends, I offer you my humble wish for these days:
Grow together, reconcile your hearts, and let the light of Jesus shine upon the world through your lives.
Amen.
