Evangelists are wasting time if people have to guess whether they are Christians. Our business is too urgent. There is no time for dropping hints.

We walk by a lot of small opportunities to bear witness to Jesus. Perhaps we could resolve each day to walk by one fewer. Perhaps we could decide each day that before 10 a.m. we will do one thing to love, honor, and celebrate Jesus that we didn’t do the day before, and then pray that that one thing will bear much fruit.

Not everyone who asked about Jesus’ stories stayed. If you come to Mass, you’re asking, but not everyone who comes to Mass stays – it happens all the time. People get baptized, or have their first communion, or get confirmed, and after that the next time they’re in church, they are the guest of honor at a funeral.

Let the weeds and wheat grow up together is the counsel of poverty and hunger. It is terrible advice. So, the Parable of the Weeds and the Wheat can be read as Jesus advice to the faithful – learn to discern the difference between temptation and the divine Word.

But the reality is that there are not enough priests to do the explaining that needs to be done, and even if there were enough, priests don’t have access to all the places where the explaining needs to happen. It isn’t just in Sunday School, but even more importantly at dinner tables, schools, and workplaces – all the places where people don’t understand what Jesus has said, or think they understand, but are dead wrong.

We stay forgiven and converted by doing the grunt work.