17th. Sunday of Year (A)
(1 Kings
3:5, 7-12; Romans 8:28-30; Matthew 13:44-52)
Our
readings this week, my dear People of God, give us great cause for gratitude
and hope. Just think of those words of St. Paul that you heard in the
second reading:
Those God foreknew He also predestined to be conformed
to the image of His Son, so that He might be the firstborn among many brothers;
and those He predestined He also called; and those He called He also justified;
and those He justified He also glorified.
God
foreknew each one of you baptized Catholics here present and predestined you to
be conformed to the likeness of His Son. How do we know that?
Because God the Father called you to faith in Jesus and -- through the waters
of baptism -- to become a member of His Body the Church, where you have been
endowed by the Gift of God’s Holy Spirit and were washed clean of all your
sins. Thus justified, you have also been glorified, for that outpouring
of the Spirit of Christ into your soul is the beginning of a life-long process
of glorification whereby the Spirit of Jesus will lead you ever further along
the way of Jesus to the Father. Every time you receive Jesus in Holy
Communion and open yourself up to Him in loving gratitude and prayer, that
glory, which is the presence of His Spirit in you, will shine ever more
brightly for the glory of the Father. You and I, each and every one of
us, known and loved by God the Father before time in Jesus, are thus destined
for eternal glory if, by the Spirit, we persevere faithfully in Jesus and His
Church!
What degree
of glory will be ours? That we do not know. But we do know that
Mary, a girl from Nazareth, is now Queen of Heaven and of all the Angels,
Principalities, and Powers. Our own degree of eternal glory will depend
on God’s plan for us: notice that, dear People of God, egalitarianism is not
on God’s agenda for us, His universal goodness is essential to it! It
will also depend, of course, on our commitment to His Person and His will
during our time on earth. Our glorification has already begun; that we
know because we love Jesus Who is in heaven and we hope for, look forward to,
His heavenly promises, with the result that although subject to temptation here
on earth, we are not ruled by the earthly lusts of our flesh, nor do we allow
ourselves to be dominated by that earthly pride which would drive us to seek
earthly success, power, and prestige above all else. As yet, we cannot
see the final result of our struggles, or the fullness of our on-going
glorification, but St. John assures us that, when Christ is revealed in all His
glory at the end of time, we too, who now are members of His Body and being led
by His Spirit, shall be like Him and share with Him in His glory:
Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not
yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we
shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. (1 John 3:2)
What we
have to do, therefore, throughout our life on earth, is to remain faithful to
Jesus. That will most certainly demand effort at times, because we have
to be tested, formed, and found worthy of God’s gifts and promises; but St.
Paul reassures us, as you heard in that second reading:
We know that all things work
for good for those who love God, who are called according to His
purpose.
That means,
that in all the events of our life, no matter how unexpected, painful, and
puzzling they may be, God our Father is at work: seeking to form us by His
Spirit -- through those experiences -- in the likeness of His Son, our Saviour, so
that we might ultimately be able to share His glory.
Surely,
therefore, dear friends in Christ, we should, indeed, regard ourselves as
having found a treasure, a pearl of great price, and we should carefully listen
to and try to gratefully appreciate, Jesus’ parables in today’s Gospel reading:
The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a
field, which a man found and hid; and for joy over it he goes and sells all
that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is
like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, who, when he had found one pearl of
great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it.
There,
Jesus puts before us two individuals: one, an ordinary man and chance-finder,
the other, a business man and professional-searcher; two very different people
yet with the same characteristic attitude, for, when they find or track down
something of supreme value they both want to make it their own at whatever
cost, both of them willing and glad to give all they have to acquire that
treasure, such a pearl! Now, all of
us here are in a similar position, for Jesus is the treasure, the pearl beyond
compare, revealed to us by the Father:
No one can come to Me unless the Father Who sent Me
draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day. (John 6:44)
Why has the
Father drawn us to Jesus?
God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten
Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)
The Father
has called us to Jesus, since, without His saving grace we would be lost in,
overpowered by, the initial attractions or the ultimate horror and desolation
of sin:
Whoever does not abide in Me is thrown away like a
branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and
burned. (John
15:6 NRSV)
Yes, Jesus
is indeed the treasure, the pearl of great price, and each of us knows where He
is to be found for our ever-greater delight and sustenance: in the life and
sacraments of Mother Church, above all the Eucharist, and in her
Scriptures. Only the Spirit of Jesus, given in fullness to Mother
Church, can reveal to us -- in and through her worship and teaching -- the
wonder of Jesus' saving life and love; only the Spirit of Jesus
can enable us to share in the life of Jesus through the sacraments given us in
Mother Church as sources of divine life and conduits of saving grace; only
the Spirit can gradually fill and transfigure the thoughts of our minds and
the aspirations of our hearts through the Scriptures which enshrine Mother
Church’s most treasured remembrances of Him Who lived and died among men for
their salvation.
One can
indeed find treasures of wisdom and pearls of beauty in the various religions
and traditions whereby men and women have sought and served God throughout
human history. However, the one supreme treasure, the one pearl precious
beyond all compare is Jesus of Nazareth -- God's supreme
revelation of His very own Being of Love, in His only begotten Son-made-man, by
His Gift of the Spirit of them both – Who is to be found uniquely in the
Catholic and Christian Eucharist and in the Scriptures of the Universal Church
which is His Body, and which is unfailingly sustained and infallibly guided by
God’s Holy Spirit to lead mankind into all truth about eternal life and
salvation.
The
question now is: what are you doing about that treasure, what efforts are you
willing to make to ensure that that pearl offered you may indeed become yours
for all eternity?
Pope St.
Gregory the Great tells a story which goes something like this: imagine someone
going on, let us say, a journey on the Orient Express, travelling in luxury
towards some wonderful destination, let us imagine, Venice. It is a long
journey; deliberately so, because the trip is meant to embrace many places of
great interest along the way: places of beauty such as mountain villages and places
of curious attraction, such as ancient bazaars. Let us further imagine
that the train stops at some of these places and, on one particular day, allows
passengers to alight in order to visit a bazaar, a most famous one, during a
two-hour stop by the Orient Express. One of the passengers goes from
stall to stall, into one bar or boutique after another; he haggles here and
there for bargains to take back, and in this delightful process forgets all
about the ultimate destination for which he had set out on this long,
expensive, journey! He forgets about Venice, the uniquely situated and
wonderfully adorned city of history, culture and beauty, he forgets all about
the friends awaiting him there, and loses himself in that smelly bazaar,
distracted by little trinkets peddled by the hawkers there, and he misses,
indeed forgets all about, the train. What a fool!
People of
God, so many Christians, so many Church members, are like that foolish
traveller, allowing themselves to be distracted from seeking the Lord by the
pleasures and cares of life. Others there are, who once were true
servants of the Lord, but who -- over time – disastrously allowed themselves to
lose their early fervour. We saw this in the life of King Solomon --
beloved of God -- as we heard in the first reading:
In Gibeon the LORD appeared to Solomon in a dream at
night. God said, “Ask something of Me and I will give it to you.” Solomon
answered: “O LORD, my God, You have made me, Your servant, king to succeed my
father David; but I am a mere youth, not knowing at all how to act. Give Your
servant, therefore, an understanding heart to judge Your people and to
distinguish right from wrong. For who is able to govern this
vast people of Yours?”
The LORD
was pleased that Solomon made this request.
So, God said to him: “Because you have asked for
understanding so that you may know what is right— I do as you requested. I give
you a heart so wise and understanding that there has never been anyone like you
up to now, and after you there will come no one to equal you.
Again, the
Lord advised him:
If you live in My presence as your father David lived,
sincerely and uprightly, doing just as I have commanded you, keeping My
statutes and decrees, I will establish your throne of
sovereignty over Israel forever.
However, King
Solomon did not persevere in following the Lord’s statutes and commandments,
becoming distracted from God’s ways by his successes, by the loves of his life,
and by the praises lavished on him:
When Solomon was old his wives turned his heart to
strange gods, and his heart was not entirely with the LORD his God, as the
heart of his father David had been. The LORD, therefore, became
angry with Solomon because his heart was turned away from the LORD, the God of
Israel, Who had appeared to him twice.
People of
God, the gospel-treasure hidden in the Scriptures, the pearl at the centre of
Church life, is Jesus, the Word of God made flesh, now become our glory and our
Saviour, and Who will be our sublimely rich reward:
I rejoice in Your Word like one who discovers a great
treasure. (Ps.
119:162 NLT)
The Father
has called us to Jesus, to His Word, giving us His Holy Spirit to guide,
support, and sustain us in our search for Him Who is our Light and our
Salvation, Whose Truth and gift of Self is indeed our very Life. Let us
not, therefore, be led astray by earthly pleasures or worldly worries; let us
not be deceived by the earthly security promised by money or by popularity;
neither let us be put off by the earthly anxieties or trials which are an
unavoidable part of our Christian life and calling today. We are on a
journey and our destination is eternal glory as children of God in Jesus; we
must press on to the end, we must persevere in seeking Jesus, because that is
the hall-mark of a true Catholic and Christian. Otherwise, if the Spirit
is no longer able to move us in Jesus towards the Father, then we might become
like those nominal Catholics mentioned in our third parable today, caught and
become bad fish in the Church’s net:
The kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet that was cast
into the sea and gathered some of every kind, (and) which, when it was full,
they drew to shore; (there) they sat down and gathered the good into vessels,
but threw the bad away.
People of
God, such is not the destiny before us who sincerely love Jesus; it is for us
to persevere, seeking for and walking with Jesus, as the prophet Micah (6:8)
advises:
You have been told, O man, what is good, and what the
LORD requires of you: only to do right and to love goodness, and to walk humbly
with your God.
Finally,
dear Catholic and Christian people, notice something that is in every one of
our Sunday readings and which it is absolutely essential for us to know and
advert to today, for it totally distinguishes us as believers in Jesus from all
those non-believers who proclaim so loudly and preach so fervently their
pseudo-philosophical and politically-popular ethics, namely the
existence, the importance, and indeed the ultimately decisive reality of
divinely distinguished GOOD as distinct from BAD, of RIGHT from WRONG:
O Lord my God, give Your servant an understanding
heart to judge Your people and to distinguish right from wrong.
We know that God causes everything to work together
for the good of those who love God and are called according to His
purpose for them. (NLT)
The Kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the
sea. When it is full they haul it ashore and sit down to put what is
good into buckets, what is bad they throw away. Thus it will be at
the end of the age. The angels will separate the wicked from the
righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be
wailing and grinding of teeth.
