Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 109
Reading 11 KGS 3:5, 7-12
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.
I serve you in the
midst of the people whom you have chosen,
a people so vast
that it cannot be numbered or counted.
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 this—
not for a long
life for yourself,
nor for riches,
nor for the life
of your enemies,
but 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.”
Responsorial PsalmPS 119:57, 72, 76-77, 127-128, 129-130
R. (97a) Lord, I love your commands.
I have said, O
LORD, that my part
is to keep your
words.
The law of your
mouth is to me more precious
than thousands of
gold and silver pieces.
R. Lord, I love
your commands.
Let your kindness
comfort me
according to your
promise to your servants.
Let your
compassion come to me that I may live,
for your law is my
delight.
R. Lord, I love
your commands.
For I love your
command
more than gold,
however fine.
For in all your
precepts I go forward;
every false way I
hate.
R. Lord, I love
your commands.
Wonderful are your
decrees;
therefore I
observe them.
The revelation of
your words sheds light,
giving
understanding to the simple.
R. Lord, I love your commands.
Reading 2ROM 8:28-30
Brothers and sisters:
We know that all
things work for good for those who love God,
who are called
according to his purpose.
For those he
foreknew he also predestined
to be conformed to
the image of his Son,
so that he might
be the firstborn
among many
brothers and sisters.
And those he
predestined he also called;
and those he
called he also justified;
and those he justified he also glorified.
AlleluiaCF. MT 11:25
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Blessed are you,
Father, Lord of heaven and earth;
for you have revealed
to little ones the mysteries of the kingdom.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
GospelMT 13:44-52 OR 13:44-46
Jesus said to his disciples:
“The kingdom of
heaven is like a treasure buried in a field,
which a person
finds and hides again,
and out of joy
goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.
Again, the kingdom
of heaven is like a merchant
searching for fine
pearls.
When he finds a
pearl of great price,
he goes and sells
all that he has and buys it.
Again, the kingdom
of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea,
which collects
fish of every kind.
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 go
out and separate the wicked from the righteous
and throw them
into the fiery furnace,
where there will
be wailing and grinding of teeth.
“Do you understand
all these things?”
They answered,
“Yes.”
And he replied,
“Then every scribe
who has been instructed in the kingdom of heaven
is like the head
of a household
who brings from
his storeroom both the new and the old.”
MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS,
We
should have great joy knowing that Jesus Christ is in our lives. Walking with
Him and living our lives by His precepts ensures success in all things that we
do. It also ensures a wonderful life full of revelation and boundless love.
These successes are not successes in human terms nor are the revelations and
love restrained by human definition. Instead it needs to be understood that
what we are guaranteed from Jesus Christ are things of a spiritual nature which
will free us from the bonds of an earthly experience and instead usher us into
a mystical experience which is far beyond anything we can expect from the
material world. As Christians we have the understanding that God created the
heavens and the earth; all things visible and invisible. When we acknowledge
this then the barrier between the physical and the spiritual is removed and
these two worlds can be experienced together as it was God’s plan for it to be
that way in the first place. Any barrier that has been present between us and
our God were ones that have been erected by us and not by Him. There is always
the opportunity to have them removed by asking God to remove them and welcoming
Him into our hearts and our lives. He is always waiting for us to ask Him to do
this. He always wants us to do this. He loves us that much. A relationship and
a life with Jesus Christ is the first step towards opening ourselves to God and
this new life which is promised.
Wisdom
is a combination of knowledge, understanding, and experience. All these
qualities taken together bring a person to a higher level of awareness of
everything that is happening internally and externally. This does not only
apply to the physical things but spirituality as well. Everything is deepened
by and through wisdom. That is why there are so many books dedicated to wisdom
in Sacred Scripture and why it is also mentioned frequently throughout. Jesus
Christ being the Word made Flesh is the centerpiece of all wisdom for it flows
directly from Him into all of God’s creation. Being in right relationship with Jesus
makes us receivers of wisdom and benefactors of all that comes with it. When
the Word became flesh and came into the world it became a defining moment for
all of God’s creation because Jesus Christ the Son of God and the Holy Spirit
were revealed fully in relationship to The Holy Trinity. That event became the
culmination of everything that came before in the entire history of creation:
Wisdom revealed in all of its glory. Welcoming Christ into our lives welcomes
wisdom in its entirety and we then have the capability of expanding it and
applying it to everything that we say and do. It also completes us as God’s
children. Setting aside what we think we know and receiving these heavenly
gifts can only make our lives better as a result.
God
appeared to Solomon in a dream and offered Him anything that He wanted. Solomon
asked for the gift of wisdom above any earthly desires. He wanted to rule the
Jewish People rightly and justly but worried that He was too young and naive to
do so. Understanding his limitations in comparison to the limitlessness of God
and His greatness enabled Solomon to become a receiver of the Gift of Wisdom.
He was known throughout history for his great wisdom and was arguably the
greatest king in the history of Israel. When we humble ourselves before God and
are open to Him we can also become receivers of the same thing. Spiritual Gifts
will flow from God to us as a result. The Apostle Paul tells us that, “ All
things work for good for those who love God.” He explains that when we focus
on God and welcome Him into our lives then we become a vehicle of His pure
goodness and love. Our actions are not ours anymore. We walk with God and that
becomes a great benefit for us and those around us.
It is
plainly obvious how small we are in comparison to God but God really doesn’t
care nor should we. It should be comforting to us that God knows all of us
intimately. He knows all of our darkest secrets and our greatest
successes. He does not want to judge us but instead wants to heal us and
offer a pathway to redemption. God’s greatness might, at times, scare us and
cause us to doubt: How can there even be a God? How can God love me and know
me? God is here and He is ready to give us the greatest gifts imaginable if
only we are open to receive them. Imagine a small child in the arms of its
father or mother. There is complete trust and complete joyfulness. The only
thing the child wants to do is experience the moment and the comfort that is
offered by its parent. In reality it is very easy for a child to relax and
enjoy existing in the moment when that moment is complete love. That is how God
wants us to approach Him all of the time: relaxed and in the moment to
experience pure love.
Jesus
Christ offers us the vision of what type of relationship we can have with Him
and with God. It is perfection. It is something that arguably we have sought
for our entire lives but were distracted through our own free will and the
temptations of the world. Treating God as our Father and Jesus Christ as His
son who is guiding us on this great journey of life opens up a whole new world
of experience and wonderment that is beyond anything that we could ever
comprehend. It is up to us how we treat it and how we allow the experience to
influence our lives. We can easily dismiss what Jesus Christ is telling us or
we can embrace it and cherish it like He wants us to do. The results will speak
for themselves. With The Word of God and the teachings of Jesus Christ we are
guaranteed a fruitful, beautiful life. With them we already know what that will
lead to because we have experienced it already.
Deacon
Tom
MY BROTHERS AND
SISTERS
When Paul
tells us in his letter that, “all things work for good for those who love
God,” we should really contemplate what
he is saying. Being involved daily in our faith and focusing on our
relationship with God will bring about not only a change in ourselves but also
a change in our environment. As God transforms us, we will become His
instruments in transforming others and things around us. Through our loving of
God we will be more intent on preserving our relationship with him and will
learn how not to sin. Even more, the desire to sin will slowly fade away and be
replaced with joy. A byproduct of this process is that God will enter all of our
actions and all of our thoughts, influencing what we say and what we do. We
will then be builders instead of destroyers. We will be sowers not reapers and
we will also be able to experience the fruits of our labor in a positive way
which will then bring about more fruit and more life. As long as we keep loving
God and putting that love into action, only goodness and prosperity will
abound.
With God there is no selfishness. We must model
ourselves that very same way. We must give ourselves completely to Him and
cherish what He has given us: life, love, and His entire creation for us to
experience. Jesus challenges us to put God completely first and foremost in our
lives. Everything needs to be
surrendered to Him. There should be a fear of breaking our relationship with
Him. We need to be able to have a desire to sacrifice everything from our
possessions, comforts, and way of life to what we want for ourselves. When this
happens, we then receive the gift of wisdom and revelation, for we will then
start to understand more about ourselves and about the thoughts of God. Our
decisions and actions will then be influenced by this entire process.
The more that we exercise, be it physical or mental,
we become stronger in that area. It is the same for our spirituality. The more
time and energy we put into our relationship with God, the stronger it gets.
There is an action and reaction here. God calls to us constantly and we must
respond so as to feel His presence. Once we respond, we must then stay focused
and concentrate on it harder. This is accomplished through prayer, discerning
Sacred Scripture, and worship. All of these are equal in their importance and
lead to a strong foundation in which we can build on. A floodgate of love and
goodness will be opened that will wash away all the clutter and dirt which has
blackened us.
When we exercise and eat healthy, we feel good. When
we read or challenge ourselves mentally, we feel good. When act out our faith,
we feel good. Yet, there are so many times and situations where we stop
exercising and eating healthy, stop challenging ourselves mentally, and stop
acting out our faith. Why do we do this? It is because there is a dimension of
hard work to it where results might not be fully realized immediately. That is
when we have to turn to God and ask Him to lend us His strength and support to
overcome our frailty. He will respond and He will lift us up. That is when we
have to turn to our community and friends and ask for their help. Our community
and our friends will respond.
The Kingdom of God is all around us. The Kingdom of
God is inside of us. We need to live our lives within that goodness and love
which is His Kingdom. When we do this, we can be protected, cared for, and
loved appropriately by Him who created us. God will never push us out of His
Kingdom. We are the only ones who can separate ourselves from it. When we live
in it, we can then see everything from God for what it is: perfect and
beautiful. Our reaction to it will bring about more perfection and beauty.
Deacon Tom
The Kingdom of Heaven! Today the Gospel of Matthew gives us a small understanding about the Kingdom of Heaven. Most of us today don’t think in terms of kingdoms, but we could rephrase the Kingdom of Heaven as all who belong the Lord. It is we who form one people, one grouping, one body in Christ. Individualism has dominated so much of our thinking, yet our Scriptures are clear: we go to the Father as a people, as a community of people, not just as individuals.
Our first reading today is from the First Book of Kings. In this passage, King Solomon asks for wisdom in order to be able to guide the people of his kingdom. The surprise is that King Solomon does not ask for strength, nor for riches, nor for a good life for himself, nor for triumph over his enemies. Instead, King Solomon seeks wisdom to serve the people.
What do we seek in life? What do I seek in life personally? These are natural questions after hearing about King Solomon. What do I want in life: Money? Power? Control over others? Relationships? Triumph over my enemies?
Instead, the Kingdom of God is like a wonderful gift of love for all others and should overcome in us all the desire to have things just for myself or for my loved ones. Rather, the Kingdom of Heaven pushes me to want to good of the other person and the good of all.
The second reading today is from the Letter to the Romans. In this letter, we discover that “all things work for good for those who love God.” When we begin to live in God, our way of seeing the world and what happens to us and to others in a new way. Always we trust that what happens is in the hands of God. We don’t understand His ways but we understand that He loves us. God wants to conform us to the image of His Son, Jesus Christ. God will conform us to the image of His Son, Jesus Christ. This is God’s work. Our work is simply to accept God’s work within us and to allow God to work within us.
This brings us back to the Gospel today, from Saint Matthew. God brings about His Kingdom and God will take out of His Kingdom all that does not belong to His Kingdom. You and I must be purified of all that is in us and which is against the Kingdom. We should not fear this purification. Rather we should recognize that purification is necessary so that we can be with God completely and always. Let us pray for the purification! Once we see the immense value and joy of the Kingdom, it is all we shall want.
Your brother in the Lord,
Abbot Philip
Seventeenth Sunday: Wisdom and Bringing Out
the Best of the Past
Msgr. Joseph A. Pellegrino
This Sunday’s readings begin with Solomon’s request for Wisdom and conclude
with a summation of the Lord’s teaching on the parables.
At the conclusion of the Dissertation on the parables in the Gospel of
Matthew, Jesus states: “Every scribe of the Kingdom is like the head of the
household who brings out from his storeroom both the new and the old.”
Jesus spoke to the Jewish people, well versed in Hebrew scripture. The Gospel
of Matthew was pointed towards Jewish Christians. Jesus is not replacing
what we call the Old Testament with the New Testament. He is combining
the best of the Hebrew Scriptures with the New Way, the Kingdom of God. The
wise one, the scribe of the Kingdom, therefore, knows how to use what is old
and what is new.
It takes wisdom to understand how to deal with the past and the present.
There are many people who idealize the past and want to return to life as it
was, for example, in the fifties. There are many others who want to
reject the past and concentrate only on the advancements of modern life. So, in
the area of family life, the first group wants to re-create the Cleaver Family
from one of the first sit-coms, Leave it to Beaver, and the second group
sees a value in a sit-com like Modern Family. In the area of
faith, the first group wants to return to the pre-Vatican Church and the second
group wants a Church without a visible structure.
How do we best deal with the past and the present? I believe that it was
the Russian poet/philosopher, Yevgeny Aleksandrovich
Yevtushenko, who had this insight: He said that the trick to handling the
past is to know what should be brought with us and what should be left
behind. That is wisdom. For example, within the Church, we should
bring with us from the past devotion to the sacraments, to the Mother of God,
the importance of the Catholic Family, firm standards of morality, a
determination to practice the faith. What should be left behind would
include the subordination of the laity, the repression of the roles of women in
the faith, the glorification of the clergy, and the diminishing of the study of
Sacred Scripture.
We should also apply this to our lives. All of us can look back on our
lives and note numerous positive and multiple negative aspects of our
lives. We have got to stop persecuting ourselves by dwelling on the
negatives of our past. When we do this, we are bringing the past into the
present. Leave it in the past. At the same time, it is not pride to
recognize the gifts we have shown and to be sure that we utilize our potential,
or make our talents real in the present.
So, for example, a person went through a period of life when he or she behaved
immorally. Then, perhaps due to a religious experience most likely
occasioned by love, that person changed his or her lifestyle and became the
person he or she is now. He or she said, “I am getting married now. I am
having a child now. I need to be a person of integrity.” And that person
grew up spiritually determined to live a new, dedicated Christian
lifestyle.
It would be so wrong for that person or any of us to dwell on the mistakes of
the past. If sin was involved, well, remember the sacrament of
reconciliation is given to us to leave the past in the past and to concentrate
on the present. On the positive side, a person can look at his or her
past and remember how volunteer work for the poor or sick was so important
during high school or college. Perhaps, he or she might remember how
others could not deal with a dying person, but how he or she was able to sit
down, chat with the sick person, and see that person, not the person’s
sickness. Reflecting on this, the person says, “Hey, I can do this.
And it is important for me to use this gift God gave me. I’m going to
volunteer as an AIDS buddy or as a hospice companion.” This is looking at
the past and bringing the best with us to the present.
You married folks really should do this when considering your
relationship. If you are human beings, then you have made mistakes.
Leave them in the past. You have also been supportive and caring.
Bring this into your present. Sometimes, a couple will see me that is
having a crisis in their marriage. Often, I’ll mention that the present
situation needs to be dealt with, but don’t let this situation cause you
to overlook all the good you have done for each other and the growth you
have achieved as a loving couple. Some people are too quick to give up on
marriage and end up realizing what they have lost only after it is too late.
Solomon prayed for wisdom. Not a bad idea. It takes wisdom to
combat the challenges of life. It takes wisdom to be a good parent, a
good husband, a good wife, a good priest, a good person. It takes wisdom
to discern what needs to be brought into the present and what needs to be left
in the past.
Where do we get this wisdom? The same place that Solomon received
his.
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