Father Chas Canoy
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Father Chas Canoy reflects on Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the weeds and the remarkable conversion of former London gangster John Pridmore. This homily reminds us that no one is beyond God’s mercy and challenges us to accompany others toward the healing and transformation found in Jesus Christ.
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So, in the early 1980s and, no, the 1980s and early 90s, there was this huge 6’5 brute of a man who was a notorious London gangster. So you know how in hockey you have those certain players, usually pretty imposing in size, called enforcers, who are sent in to fight players on the other team to send a message? Well, this 6’5 John Pridmore was not that for a hockey team, but for the London Underground criminal network, right? So this violent gangster from the east end of London was baptized Catholic, but his family didn’t raise him in the faith. In fact, his parents would divorce when he was around 10 years old, and that totally shattered him.
And he put this shell around his heart and kind of vowed to not love because it hurt so much, right? And so he began stealing at 13 years old. At 15, he was sent to a youth detention center. Then at 19 years old, he was imprisoned again for violent behavior, often in solitary confinement during that time.
He thought about taking his own life, and he became more and more angry and bitter at life. And in the 80s, Pridmore’s work as a bouncer led him into the London’s Underground Network of Organized Crime, where he rose through their ranks. And by the early 90s, he became very wealthy through protection rackets and drug trafficking.
So with that, he got his penthouse, his luxury sports cars, a life of licentiousness. Now given what you’ve heard so far, and based on the gospel that you just heard about the parable of the wheat and the weeds, do you think John Pridmore was more of the wheat or more of the weeds? The weeds, obviously, right? So he committed mortal sin after mortal sin, victimized others, and worse yet, he led others into those same mortal sins. But we’ll get back to John Pridmore a little later.
Let’s take a closer look at this illuminating parable. So once the wheat had begun to bear its yield, the workers out in the field noticed that there were weeds growing among the weed as well. So they asked their master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where have the weeds come from? And the master responds, an enemy has done this.
So notice one of the first truths this parable reveals. God does not create anything evil. Remember from the first chapter of Genesis, God saw all that he had made and found it very good.
So God has made each of us in his own image and thus sees us as fundamentally good, right? That’s the only kind of seed God makes, the good kind. Yes, because we’re one human family, original sin kind of tainted that, right? So the weeds that crop up then are the work of the enemy. We saw that in Genesis too, right? The way he spawns the children of evil is by corrupting the good.
See, I love that saying that the devil has, the devil doesn’t have his own clay, right? All that the devil can do is take what God has made and twist it and order it and try to influence it towards evil. Everything God has made is good. He doesn’t have, the devil doesn’t have his own clay.
All he can do is to try to twist God’s creation and order it to something that God did not intend for that thing to do or to be. So sometimes we wonder with all the evil that’s going on in the world, why doesn’t God do something? With all the people suffering injustice, millions of people enslaved through human trafficking, with wars in the Ukraine and the Middle East, with the persecution of Christians in North Korea, Nigeria, Somalia, just to name a few, and with all leaders around the world who act in their own self-interest at the expense of the people they’re supposed to serve. Why doesn’t God exact retribution? And today’s parable sheds light on that question, right? When the laborers asked their master, do you want us to go and pull them up? And he replied, no.
If you pull up the weeds, you might uproot the wheat along with them. So let them grow together until harvest. And Jesus explains to his disciples later on that the harvest is the end of the age, the consummation of time, right? So friends, there are those right now who may be committing much evil and appear like they’re the weeds, but given the time and opportunity, they may be transformed to be among the wheat.
God the Father is like a loving parent that wants to give their wayward kid every chance to turn their life around. It may mean that the other kids in the family have to share in the parent’s pain and suffering. I mean, look at our eldest brother, what he shared in the father’s pain and suffering.
But that’s how much God the Father and God the Son loves us, right? And maybe you yourself or the person sitting next to you at some point in their life produced the evil effects of the weeds. But now here you are, worshiping the merciful God who was our joy, our love, and for whom we were made. In fact, I know that includes all of us because although we may not have been part of some crime syndicate, St. Paul reminds us that all have fallen short of the glory of God.
All have sinned and fall short of the glory. None of us is perfect, and yet we’re called to that perfection. That’s what God invites us to is his perfection.
But thanks to the divine mercy of the Lord, we have been and continue to be healed from the wounds of sin and now given the mission to be agents of that same healing and salvation for the people around us. In fact, it’s those former weeds that often become the most fruitful witnesses to others because of how stark the change in their life has become, right? And they show us that no one is beyond God’s transformative grace. So speaking of that, let’s go back to our friend John Pridmore.
One night, just outside of a London club, Pridmore almost killed a man using brass knuckles. As he headed back home, something or someone inside of him revealed the ugliness of his soul who had felt no shame or guilt about what he had just done. Then at home, he interiorly heard a voice speaking to him directly to his heart that he knew was God.
And that profound experience of God and the revelation of the total emptiness of his life without him led him to pray to God for the very first time that night. First time in his life he prayed, he says. So Pridmore would soon attend a Catholic retreat at which he made his first confession, walking away from his criminal life.
And part of walking away from his former life involved leaving London and volunteering to serve the poorest of the poor alongside Mother Teresa, or Mother Teresa, as he would say. So he said this about the saint. She was the person who really taught me how to love again, how to love myself and how to love others.
She was also one of the first people I ever met who had no fear. I have worked with some of the hardest men in London. They’re all paranoid out their heads, as he would say in his Cockney kind of East End London accent.
But here was this little nun, little nun, who had no fear of anything. And when I reflected on why Mother Teresa had no fear, do you know what I think it was? Pure love drives out all fear. Pure love drives out all fear.
She was so filled with God’s love that there was no more room in her heart for fear. And the more I’ve tried to open my heart to that love, the less fear I have in my life. Now I spend my life trying to give because I was so sick of taking.
End of quote. So in 2002, John Pridmore would release his autobiography from Gangland to Promised Land, and he established St. Paul’s Community, which is an evangelization team of three men and a woman dedicated to promoting the gospel and doing healing retreats, primarily through Ireland and the UK. But Pridmore has proclaimed God’s transformative love throughout the world.
And as of like 2012 or 2015 or something like that, he already preached to over three million people, and he’s still going at it today. At 62 years old, he’s still proclaiming God’s transformative love. So even more than, lots more than those three million.
So I, for one, also being a miserable sinner, I’m happy that God is patient and merciful, right? He waits to give the command to his angels to pull the weeds, lest they do so prematurely, and pulling up the weed along with them. So God’s patience gives us all the time and the opportunity to be right with God before the final reckoning. Whether that’s the end of time or the end of our own life, whatever comes first.
Now while God is merciful, you can also be rest assured that he hears the cries of his children, right? Those who have suffered and are still suffering today. Their cries don’t go unheard. There will be divine retribution.
And that’s why Jesus in this parable condemns not just evildoers in general, but singles out the unrepentant who lead others to sin, right? Recall our Lord Jesus’ words that we just heard Father Randy proclaim. The Son of Man will send his angels and they will collect out of his kingdom all who cause others to sin and all evildoers. They will throw them into the fiery furnace where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.
Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of the Father. Those who have ears ought to hear. So justice will prevail, right? Because God desires the salvation of all.
His mercy will, because he desires the salvation of all, his mercy will reign until the end. And at the end, that’s why we have Saint Michael up there, that one just below the Lamb of God, there’s the three archangels. You see Saint Michael holding the scales of justice on the left, so God is all just.
But also on his right, he’s embracing the cross. So God is all merciful and all just and all merciful. And on those scales of justice, we would be left wanting, were it not for the cross on the right hand that tips the scales to our favor, right? To those who remain faithful to him until the end.
So in conclusion, I want to encourage all of us to have that same heartfelt desire of God for the conversion and salvation of all. So how are you, not the person next to you, how are you doing in your walking with one? In accompanying someone in your life that is not in a sacramental relationship with Jesus to bring his healing and transformation that he wants to give them, the one that he’s placed on your heart? That person may not be a John Pridmore, but the answer to that is yes, because every human being needs healing and transformation that Jesus offers, right? So what do we do about it? Well, our next OCIA class, which is also Catholicism 101 open to anyone, Catholic or not, is this Wednesday, July 22nd at 6.30 p.m. There’s a 6 p.m. gathering time for snacks and fellowship if you’re interested in that as well. But now, if that 6.30 Wednesday evening time slot is generally not a good time for you or the one that you’re accompanying into the church or back into the church, we also have the very same presentation on Sunday at 8.30 a.m. So right in time for the 10 a.m. mass or you can take a break and come back for the 12th.
So this week’s class on Wednesday and this next Sunday will be on the Trinity and the Incarnation, which is a perfect intro for those who don’t know much about anything of the Catholic faith. So, with it being summer, these inquiry classes meet every other week. But once September hits, the OCIA classes become weekly.
So in preparation for becoming Catholic and the Easter Vigil. So pray about who God has placed on your heart and how you’re doing in accompanying them to that point of actively discerning that in the inquiry sessions at OCIA. Let’s become that joyful community of missionary disciples called to reach out throughout all of Jackson County to transform the weeds.
Transform the weeds, not smoke it, okay? I don’t know if you heard me, but we’ll pray. Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. Feel free to repeat after me if you are so moved, very brief and simple prayer.
Dear Jesus, remembering the mercy that you have shown me, help me to be merciful as you are merciful, amen.