St. Alphonsus Liguori
Wheat and weeds. Sheep and goats. Good fish, bad fish. Parables like this one can make moderns – esp. Western moderns – squirm a bit. They just sound so primitive, so absolute and potentially dangerous. They require us to think about what makes weeds, goats, and bad fish bad. Who sets the standards for good and bad? Who makes the judgment between the two? Can we really say that the goats deserve to be thrown into the fiery pit and the weeds burned at the edge of the field? The bad fish are thrown away. Do they have no value at all? What about love and forgiveness? Surely, Jesus expects us to love and forgive those who are headed toward the flames! He does. He absolutely does. He also expects us to recognize and respect the principal property of love: freedom. He does. The Father does. The Spirit does. Love – true, liberating love – cannot be coerced. It cannot be imposed. It must be chosen. Freely given and freely received. So, when Jesus says that the weeds and goats are tossed into the fire and the bad fish are thrown away, he's saying that he loves them in their freedom to be what they've chosen to be.
Now, of course, real goats and weeds and bad fish don't choose to be what they are. But human beings – rational animals – do choose to turn themselves into those sorts of beings who resolutely reject divine love. IOW, they choose the fiery pit. And putting them there honors their choice. As wildly irrational as that choice seems to us, it is their choice. Our discomfort (?) with that choice in no way allows us to tell them that their choices have no consequences. Doing so may make us feel better about their choice and their destination, but we have to remember that lying is never pastoral. Telling the goats and weeds among us that no one ever goes into the fire, or that the fire is a primitive myth; or that b/c God loves everyone, He would never allow them to be burned – telling them any of this is lying. It's lying to soothe our discomfort with a truth Christ himself clearly teaches. Whatever squeamishness we may have about the reality of eternal damnation should be settled by the knowledge that such a fate is freely chosen. And freely honored. Our mission is live lives wholly given to Christ the Good Shepherd, bearing witness to his mercy and showing – in word and deed – that choosing divine love is the only sane choice.
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