Thus the teaching of this parable, like that of many others, hammers home the inevitability of that decisive separation in the Day of Judgement when everyone shall be allotted his or her final destiny.

Yet although this separation of the bad from the good within the Kingdom of God necessarily belongs to the future, it is quite otherwise with the separation of the bad from the good within the individual soul.  Indeed, it is true to say that the righteous who shall one day shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father are those who in this life have been making headway in eliminating their sins and the effects of their sins from their souls.

Heaven is nothing less than the sight of the all-holy God, and, as Our Lord has told us, it is the pure in heart – or more literally the purified in heart – who shall see God (Matthew 5:8).  Indeed, it is only they who will want to see him.  And the way we purify our souls may be compared to the regular use of the hoe in the elimination of weeds.  In other words, to get rid of our sins systematically at regular intervals by means of repentance.  Before any soul can be admitted to Heaven it must be clean, like the field in the parable was clean at harvest-time.  For the wheat, and only the wheat, is stored in the Father’s barn: the weeds – all that is sinful or unworthy – have no place there.