Our culture seems more polarized and divided than ever. Into this wounded situation, our Catholic faith has a healing remedy to offer: the gift of wisdom. When the Lord offers to give King Solomon anything the monarch desires, he requests “an understanding heart” (1 Kings 3:9). In his polarized situation, the King doesn’t ask for power to defeat his enemies. He asks for a wise and understanding heart to judge right from wrong. This wisdom is elevated and fulfilled in Jesus who teaches us to bring forth “both the new and the old” (Matthew 13:52).

Life, like the church, is often burdened with evil, smallness, and impurities. The Lord’s parables give us a hope-filled perspective on all three.

Evil: in Jesus’ parable about the good farmer whose enemy plants weeds at night, Jesus tells us that God is not the cause of evil but permits evil to exist with good out of his patient love. He will finally deal with it, but his love lets things stay messy for a time.

It’s not uncommon to hear people complain that we Catholics often fail in communicating our faith. Fair enough. We can and should improve there. But it’s interesting to notice that Jesus himself was implicitly accused by his disciples of a similar failure. This week in Matthew’s gospel they are perplexed that he speaks to the crowds in ambiguous parables.

Do you ever feel restless? I certainly do. Daily tasks and challenges, but also the more basic demand of simply existing — sooner or later, this can all feel crushing and tire us out.

Which is why Jesus’ words are such stunningly good news: “Come to me all you who labor and are burdened and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). How vastly weird that this man speaks as though he is capable of giving us the deep repose we desire. Is his claim the height of absurd grandiosity? No, because next he immediately proclaims that he is “meek and humble of heart.” We here touch a mystery: Jesus is capable of giving us rest because he is the one who forever reposes in the heart of God the Father. He is “yoked” to the Father in his divinity. But he is humbly “yoked” to us, sharing in our humanity.

“Move back in with us until you save enough for a decent house,” my mother told me over and over again as the birth of my second child neared.

My little family was quickly outgrowing our rented space, but the housing market in our area was a nightmare for first-time homebuyers. As appealing as the offer was, I kept refusing, convinced that my mother didn’t understand the chaos, disruption, and loss of personal space that such a move would mean for her and my dad.

I was wrong — she did. And eventually she wore me down. When my son was three months old my family of four moved back into my old bedroom. My parents made an office space for my husband in the basement, and they converted their den into a playroom for two of the loudest children you will ever meet. They told us we could stay as long as we needed to (it ended up being two years). They greeted us with love and warmth every morning and never made us feel like we were an inconvenience.