For the Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Today in his Gospel, Christ gives four short teaching
parables about the kingdom of heaven.
Altogether, these teachings uphold paradoxically that the
kingdom of heaven is hidden, personal, stored away and intimate, but also
public and worldwide.
Throughout the paradox, Christ makes clear the kingdom of
heaven is worth more for us than anything else, but we could lose it.
He says a stark, ugly thing: that at the end of time the
angels are to separate the wicked from the righteous,
and What is bad they THROW AWAY, they throw them into the fiery furnace.
None of us wants to end up a THROWAWAY for burning.
So then, what is it to seek the pearl
of great price, how do we get into the kingdom of heaven, and
what will we find there?
God gives answers in today’s second reading.
We know
that all things WORK for good for those who love God,
who are
called according to his purpose.
those
he called he also justified;
and
those he justified he also GLORIFIED.
to be
conformed to the image of his Son.
GLORIFIED: overtaken and overfilled with beauty, truth,
joy, peace, life, fulfillment, unity, goodness!
Glorified without end in the kingdom of heaven!
That is what God wants for us.
We settle for less if we never get around to what God wants
for us.
Even though the Word of the Lord says all
things WORK for good for those who love God, we must ask
ourselves if WE WORK with all things
for our own good, for the glory of heaven, for love of God.
Today in his Gospel he tells us to work for the kingdom of
heaven like one who happily sells all he has so he can buy a field that holds a
buried treasure.
Selling all to buy a field with a secret buried treasure—
that’s just what God did in Christ.
God the Son sold his life unto the cross, so that he could
buy the field of the resurrection and dig out of it a buried treasure: the buried treasure of OUR humanity that in Christ rose again ... ascended into heaven and is seated at the
right hand of the Father.
For God, EACH OF US is a buried treasure
and a pearl of great price.
From the tomb, God in Christ has called, justified and
glorified our humanity: our joy, our
mind, our will, our body and blood.
The Lord gives us the choice to work by his side.
The Lord God calls us to the work, and leaves it to us to
answer or not.
those
he CALLED he also justified; and ... also glorified.
He also CALLED King Solomon, as we heard in the first
reading.
God
said, “Ask something of me and I will give it to you.”
Solomon
answered:
“.... Give your servant ... understanding ...
to
judge ... and to distinguish right from wrong.”
So God gave him a heart so wise
and understanding to know what is right.
That is the virtue— including the natural, human virtue— of
prudence.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church [par. 1835] upholds that prudence is using even our natural practical reason to discern, in every circumstance, our
true good and to choose the right means for achieving it.
The virtue of prudence STEERS all other virtues.
So, Solomon as a KING— a STEERSMAN of a kingdom— did most well to ask God
for understanding, wisdom or prudence.
God gave it to him.
However, in Christ, God gives us much greater
than Solomon [Mt. 12:42].
God gives us his own wisdom and glory to eat and drink in
the Body and Blood of Christ so that his wisdom and glory become ours.
To choose this treasure is to choose responsibility for it.
What shall we do with it?
Each of us— inside the kingdom of one’s own life— needs to
do what the angels will do for the kingdom of heaven at the end of time as
Christ tells it in today’s Gospel.
Each one of us needs to throw a net deeply into the sea of
one’s life and collect everything.
One needs to haul ashore the net of one’s life, sit down,
and pick through it.
With understanding, wisdom, prudence, one needs to work to
find out what is good and keep it.
One needs to work to find out also what is bad and throw it
away.
If we do not begin any of that work, then we are already
throwing away the powerful treasure of glory we receive in the Eucharistic Body
and Blood of Christ.
Then, in the end, OUR OWN CHOICES make us into THROWAWAYS.
As we choose to treat the kingdom of heaven, so we choose to
treat ourselves.
Heaven and its king want you and me.
He wants to glorify you.
He wants to justify you.
God calls you.
What is your answer, and does it show up in the way you
choose to live?
Turn. Love. Repeat.
