17th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: 1 Kings 3:5, 7-12; Romans 8:28-30; Matthew 13:44-52

VIDEO

We all want a lot of different things.
This seems to be part of what it is to be human.
Other animals have pretty limited sets of desires.
My dog, for example, seems to want food and sleep, 
twice-daily walks when he can sniff everything in sight,
and cuddles on the couch in the evening,
and all of these wants are, more or less,
controlled by instinct.
But we human beings are a different story.
We want food and shelter,
but also new cars and an end to world hunger,
recognition by our peers 
and something worth watching on television,
the latest cell phone and a happy marriage,
for our neighbor not to mow his lawn 
at 7:00 AM on Saturday
and for Vladimir Putin 
to withdraw his troops from Ukraine,
to enjoy eternal life in heaven
and to pay off our mortgage.

And each day we discover 

new things to want.
We are desiring machines 
who seem to desire most of all
more things to desire.

Now some people would tell you 
that all of this wanting is bad,
that it is materialistic or selfish 
or a recipe for disappointment.
But this doesn’t seem quite right.
God made us to desire the good,
and it is precisely because things are good
that we want them;
it is their goodness that draws our desire.
And we don’t want just material things;
we want spiritual things like joy and peace.
And we don’t want things just for ourselves;
we want good things for those we love,
and even for the world as a whole.
And while you can avoid disappointment
by avoiding desire,
you do this at the cost of losing
those good things that only come
to those who seek them out.

No, the problem is not with wanting things;
the problem is figuring out how to bring
some kind of order to our desires.
Because sometimes our desires 
are in conflict with each other.
Can we continue to consume 
a never-ending stream of products
and still hope to end world hunger?
Can I sacrifice all for my work
so as to gain recognition from my peers
and still have a happy marriage?
In the vast array of things we want
there is friction and conflict,
a need to prioritize our wants
and even to sacrifice 
some desires for others.
But how do we discern 
which of our wants is better,
which good is more worthy?
Unregulated by the instincts 
of our fellow animals,
our wants can come to seem
like a chaotic ocean 
in which we might drown.

This is why Solomon,
when invited by God 
to ask for whatever he wants
does not ask for a long life or for riches,
nor even for the defeat of Israel’s enemies.
He asks for an understanding heart.
He asks not for something 
from the long litany of wants
that we human beings can easily generate,
but for the gift of wisdom,
that gift of insight
into what is right and what is not,
what is good and what is better.
He asks for the wisdom 
that allows us to know our highest good
so that we can bring order to desire
by judging all things in light of God,
who is the source and goal of all our desiring.

This wisdom is the treasure 
hidden in the field of all our many desires,
it is the pearl of great price,
for which we should be willing to give up
everything that we have or want.
For all of those things,
as good as they may be,
are limited in their goodness.
They clash with each other,
they wear out and vanish.
Only the infinite goodness of God,
the eternal source from which flows forth
the manifold goodness of creatures,
can shed on us the light of wisdom
that will allow us to bring order to our desires,
to see what is good and what is better
by seeing them all in light of what is best.

Jesus does not simply teach this wisdom
in his parables of the hidden treasure
and the pearl of great price.
He lives it in his life,
which is wholly given over 
to the proclamation 
of the good news of God’s kingdom,
and he lives it in his death,
enduring the cross and its shame
for the sake of the joy that lay before him.
Jesus gives all he has for the love of his Father,
and in doing so he gains all,
not simply for himself,
but for all of us,
winning for us eternal life,
becoming the firstborn
among many brothers and sisters.

Being a Christian is not, in the end, 
simply about giving things up;
it is about gaining everything 
by gaining God.
St. Paul tells us that all things 
work for good for those who love God.
If we give our heart to God above all else
then we will know how to love properly 
all those things that are less than God
by desiring them for the sake of God;
we will see them in the light cast
by the eternity that Christ has won for us
and so be able to choose the better 
for the sake of the best.
So let us give our all 
for that pearl of great price,
the treasure of the wisdom 
revealed in Christ,
and may God who is merciful
have mercy on us all.

15th Week in Ordinary Time--Tuesday

Readings: Exodus 2:1-15a; Matthew 11:20-24

I recall meeting once with a couple 
that was preparing for marriage.
The groom was a convinced atheist
who liked to argue theology,
and his future wife,
an equally convinced Catholic Christian,
had spent many hours 
answering his objections
with saint-like patience.
The groom asked me,
“If God really wanted me to believe in him,
why wouldn’t he simply appear to me
and tell me that he exists?”
I replied that maybe God was not the kind of being
who appeared and disappeared willy-nilly,
that maybe there was something
inherently hidden and mysterious about God.
To which he responded: 
“Well then, why wouldn’t he send 
some kind of messenger,
someone truly trustworthy 
and without ulterior motive,
to tell me that God existed.”
At which point I simply 
pointed at his fiancée 
and asked him what more 
he was looking for.

My clever response did little to change his mind,
perhaps because it wasn’t as clever as I thought,
or perhaps because, 
even when we say we are looking 
for proof or evidence,
what really needs changing 
is not our minds, but our hearts.
Jesus does not say to Chorazin and Bethsaida
that if Tyre and Sidon had seen his mighty deeds
they would have taken up new opinions,
admitted that God was operating 

without secondary causes,
or adopted a properly orthodox Christology.
No, he says, “they would long ago 
have repented in sackcloth and ashes.”
So often our purported “intellectual difficulties”
are immune to proof and evidence
because it is our hearts 
that are mired in patterns of desire 
from which we cannot break free,
habits of self-love that we are loath to give up,
fears that hold us back from the risk of faith.
Pascal said of the probative power of miracles,
“[T]here is enough evidence to condemn 
and not enough to convince; 
and it seems that those who follow it 
are motivated by grace and not reason, 
and that those who shun it 
are motivated by concupiscence 
and not reason” (Pensées §423).

It is good for us who are theologians
to remember that the world
is not looking to be convinced
by a clever response or even a good argument.
The world is looking for the sign of Jonah,
the sign of love that empties itself
and emerges victorious from the tomb.
The world is looking for the grace of Christ
that alone can offer new life.
Let us pray that we ourselves
will receive that grace,
so that we can offer ourselves,

in union with Christ,
for the life of the world.
And may God, who is merciful,
have mercy on us all.

 

15th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Isaiah 55:10-11; Romans 8:18-23; Matthew 13:1-9

In the book of Genesis, 
after Adam and Eve have 
eaten from the forbidden tree,
God pronounces a number of “curses”
upon the human race—
conditions that will prevail
as human history moves forward, 
signs of our fallen state.
Among these is what God says to Adam:
“Cursed is the ground because of you!... 
Thorns and thistles it shall bear for you,
and you shall eat the grass of the field.
By the sweat of your brow
you shall eat bread,
until you return to the ground,
from which you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return” (Gen 3:17-19).

This forms the background 
of Jesus’ parable of the sower.
The soil in which the sower sows
is stony, thorny, shallow, 
subject to scorching sun
and ravenous birds.
Farming such land was difficult, unrewarding work.
A peasant farmer in Jesus’ day could expect at best 
a four or fivefold return on the seed he sowed.
The world in which the parable unfolds 
is a world marked by the effect of human sin,
a world marked by the curse of Adam.

In our second reading, 
Paul describes the same world:
a creation, “made subject to futility”
and “groaning in labor pains 
even until now.”
We not only see the curse of creation
in the inhospitable earth 
from which we wrest our living; 
we feel it in ourselves:
“we also groan within ourselves
as we wait for adoption, 
the redemption of our bodies,”
the bodies of dust
that will to dust return.
The hopes and aspirations 
on which we live
bear meager fruit, 
if they bear any fruit at all.
Even we who have put our faith in Christ
and have been joined to him through grace
share in this universal groaning.
Our lives are not immune 
to the frustrations of living
in a world of stony, thorny, shallow soil.
We who have been joined 
to Christ the new Adam
still live amidst the devastation 
wrought by the old Adam.

In the context of the parable of the sower,
which Jesus goes on to explain as an allegory
of the scattering of God’s word in the world
and the mixed response it receives,
we might think of the frustrations found
in our own attempts to spread God’s word.

On a large, societal scale, 
there seems to be in our own country
an increasing indifference, 
and in some quarters outright hostility,
to the Gospel that the Church proclaims.
Some of this the Church has brought on herself,
through failing to live out the Gospel,
whether from laziness and lukewarmness,
or from preferring to protect our institutions
rather than embracing the radical call of the Gospel
to faith, hope, and love.
Some of it, however, 
is because the soil in which we sow
has become stony with cynicism,
thorny with self-indulgence, 
and shallow with false ideologies 
that promise salvation
but cannot save us from ourselves.

On a smaller, more personal scale,
we look around us and notice 
that there are people missing—
friends and acquaintances who once joined us in worship
but who must have found something that they think 
is more rewarding to do with their Sunday mornings.
I am mindful especially of those of us 
who are parents with adult children,
and who sometimes dutifully, sometimes joyfully,
sowed the seed of the word in our children
by bringing them to religious formation,
making sure that they received the sacraments,
praying for them and with them,
even discussing the faith with them 
and engaging in works of charity with them,
only to see them gradually drift away,
or even angrily and dramatically depart,
and join the ranks of those 
whom sociologists call “nones”—
those who are religiously unaffiliated,
and often claim to be religiously indifferent.
Parents can find themselves asking,
“Could I have done more?”
and groan in pain 
at a sense of having failed
to produce a rich harvest of faith 
within their children.
 
But the parable of the sower 
is not about the failure of the sower,
but about his success.
Despite the curse of Adam,
despite the devastated earth,
despite the groaning of creation,
the sower’s labors bring forth
not the usual four or fivefold harvest,
but thirty or sixty or a hundredfold.
Our psalm today speaks not 
of a cursed, devastated, groaning world
but of fields that “shout and sing for joy.”
God promises through the prophet Isaiah,
“my word shall not return to me void,
but shall do my will,
achieving the end for which I sent it.”
Threaded throughout the rather bleak assessment
of the world’s condition that our scriptures offer us
is a persistent note of joy and abundance,
a constant reminder that though the world is,
as the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins puts it,
“seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil”
still, by the grace of God and the gift of the Spirit,
“there lives the dearest freshness deep down things.”

Our ability to believe in the freshness 
of these deep down things
even amid the world’s devastation
depends on seeing two things.

First, the sower in the parable is God, not us.
Of course, we all have our role to play
in sowing God’s word,
in giving an account of the hope that is in us
and bearing witness with our lives.
But were our hopes only in our own efforts,
then our groaning would be the whole story.
The point of the parable, however, 
is that it is Christ 
who sows the word in us 
and in the world,
Christ the new Adam 
who can bring forth an abundant harvest
even amid the curse wrought by the old Adam.

Second, we are still in the middle of the process;
we are not yet at the end of the parable.
Though no doubt there is unwelcoming soil,
we should not presume that we know where that is;
we should not presume that what we can see
reveals to us the still hidden work of the Spirit.
The time of harvest has not yet come
and the thirty, sixty, hundredfold yield
still remains in the future. 
We do not yet know 
where the seeds of the word
will take root and grow.
We do not yet know who will prove
to have been good or bad soil.

So when we look around us 
and lament the absence
of those who once were here,
of those who might be here but are not,
we should, even as we seek 
with patient persistence
to sow the word,
take heart from our faith
that the sufferings of this present time 
are as nothing
compared with the glory of God’s mercy 
still to be revealed for us,
in thirty, sixty, 
and hundredfold abundance.