The battle field in the heart

We usually interpret the Parable of Wheat and Weeds (Matthew 13:24-30) to mean the end of the world. That is a reasonable interpretation. The Master is God. The field is the world. The enemy is Satan. Wheat are good people and weeds are bad. Servants are angels. God allows good and bad people to live together in this world. He does not want to remove them lest the good would be harmed/rooted up as well (13:29). If you want to, you may interpret this to be the mercy of God. In reality, the good and the bad are entangled. Bad people can still pass on some of their good genes to their children, thus breeding good people in the future. We tend to oversimplify matter by killing off all the bad people now. So, God's decision not to remove bad people on earth has a point.

Now, can we think of the field as our hearts? So, wheat are virtues and weeds vices. They coexist in our hearts. In order to overcome vices, we have to strengthen our virtues. Therefore, to a certain extent, vices can do us good and we don't need to remove them too quickly ...
That doesn't sound right at all, does it? Are we not supposed to remove our bad habits/vices which prevent us from coming close to God? Vices also do harm to other innocent people. They cannot do us any good, can they?

Let's be realistic. As long as we exist in a physical body, we can never remove vices in our hearts. They are an integral part of ourselves. We have to live with them, like living with cancers. We cannot remove them completely. They exist so that we may turn more to God. Perhaps deep in our subconscious, we may find the roots of our virtues and vices entangled. Perhaps they are the same in essence but different in their dynamics such that some turn to virtues while others become vices. To put it in another way. To prevent us from becoming conceited, vices exist within us to tease us. Like what happened to St. Paul, there was "a thorn in his flesh" which the Lord refused to remove (2 Corinthians 12:7-9). So, like St. Paul, don't be discouraged by the weeds in our hearts. Keep running. Keeping fighting until the end. Perhaps Jesus kept the wounds after resurrection to remind us of the need of living with our wounds from the past, of living with cancers at present.

Lord, grant us enough grace to live with cancers. Amen.