17th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: 1 Kgs 3:5, 7-12; Rom 8:28-30; Mt 13:44-52

The story of Solomon from the Book of Kings
is reminiscent of one of those folktales
in which a magical being appears
and offers someone three wishes:
God says, “Ask something of me 
and I will give it to you.”
In folktales, this rarely turns out well.
Usually, the second and third wishes
end up being used up trying to undo
the damage wrought by the first wish,
because we human beings are not very good
at figuring out what is really valuable
or the consequences of our choices.
The things we think we want
often find a way to make us miserable,
or cause unexpected damage 
to people around us.
We choose badly
because we are congenitally foolish.

For Solomon, the problem is even worse,
since he is not given two additional wishes
with which to undo an initial foolish one.
A lot is riding on his answer.
Should he ask for the kinds of things 
that kings usually want:
a long life or riches
or the death of his enemies?
All seem desirable choices,
ways to be known far and wide
for his power and success;
ways to ensure a glorious reign.
But they all might also bring 
unforeseen consequences.
A long life might be lived out 
in pain and misery.
Riches might be stolen or incite jealousy.
The death of one’s enemies 
might just create new enemies.

So he asks instead:
“Give your servant…
an understanding heart
to judge your people 
and to distinguish 
right from wrong.”
He asks for what is truly valuable: 
a wise heart and understanding.
Only the choice of wisdom 
cannot be foolish.
And this is because, ultimately, 
in choosing wisdom we are choosing God,
whose wisdom guides all creation,
making all things work together for the good
for those who love God.

But our congenital foolishness
typically makes us seek lesser goods,
things like riches,
things like physical beauty, 
things like fame or honor or glory.
And the problem with these lesser goods
is that they are limited in their scope,
so that they put us 
in competition with each other.
However rich I am, 
there will always be someone richer;
however much looksmaxxing I do,
there will always be someone more beautiful;
however much recognition I receive,
there will always be someone more famous.
I seek the kind of fine pearls and treasures
that can be had 
only by denying them to others.
And I am haunted by the idea
that there might be 
an even better pearl
out there somewhere;
a richer treasure in some other field.
So my life becomes 
an anxious and restless competition 
for the limited goods of this passing world.

The great fourth-century Church Father,
Augustine of Hippo, 
looked at his own world,
the world of the declining Roman Empire,
and saw how the desire for power and glory 
that drove its citizens
simply ended up making them miserable
as they scrambled to dominate others,
to surpass them in wealth and beauty and fame.
The problem, he said,
was that they chose limited and passing goods
rather than goodness itself.
For only goodness itself is eternal,
and only goodness itself 
is a treasure that increases
the more that it is shared in.
Augustine wrote: “the possession of goodness 
is by no means diminished 
by being shared with a partner…; 
and one who is most willing 
to admit others to a share of it 
will have the greatest abundance 
to himself” (Civ. Dei 15.5).

The more people who share in goodness,
the more goodness there is.
The more people who share in wisdom,
the more wisdom there is.
The more people who share 
in justice and compassion,
the more justice and compassion there is.
The point is simple to grasp,
but hard to live out,
because we are congenitally foolish.
Though in the course of my life 
I have had my share of achievements,
I fixate on those who have achieved more.
Though I have riches sufficient for my needs,
I fret and worry about not having enough.
My life is like a treasure 
that I have fallen fortunately upon,
and yet I abandon it, 
worrying that there might be 
a better treasure
in some other field.
It is like a fine pearl
that I will not buy
out of fear that somewhere else
there is a finer pearl.

In my foolishness I fail to see
that God is always already 
offering me my heart’s desire
if only my heart is fixed on wisdom.
God has uncovered the treasure in the field.
God has placed the pearl in my hand.
And the price of purchase is simply
a heart given over to wisdom,
a heart that desires the highest good,
a heart that is not fearful and anxious,
a heart that is not constantly looking
at what others possess and have achieved.

That’s all it takes,
but we are congenitally foolish; 
it is a condition into which we are born.
It is for this reason that Christ,
who is Wisdom incarnate, 
has come to dwell among us
within out foolish world,

no to offer us wishes,
but “so that he might be the firstborn
among many brothers and sisters,”
so that we might be reborn 
in the image of Wisdom itself.

Let us pray that God 
would give us a heart,
that is wise and understanding.
Let us pray that the heart of Jesus,
in whom are all treasures 
of wisdom and knowledge,
would speak to our hearts
and make them like unto his.
And may God who is merciful
have mercy on us all. 

16th Week in Ordinary Time: Tuesday

Weekday homily at the Aquinas Studium, Dover MA.

Readings: Micah 7:14-15, 18-20; Matthew 12:46-50

This is a slightly disturbing passage 
for a Thomist.
Disturbing not because of 
the mention of Jesus’ “brothers,” 
nor because of the seeming disrespect 
that he shows to his Blessed Mother.
But because of the way in which his natural family
seems to be replaced by the supernatural family
that he has gathered around him:
“stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said,
‘Here are my mother and my brothers.’”

Whatever happened to 
gratia non tollat naturam, sed perficiat?
Jesus’ natural family might seem to be taken away
in favor of a new family, created by grace.
But I think this is not entirely 
a case of destruction:
Mary, after all, will be present 
at the Cross and on the day of Pentecost,
and James who is called Jesus’ brother 
will lead the disciples in Jerusalem
and meet his death for the sake of Christ.

But grace does not perfect nature
simply by bringing it 

to some expected conclusion;
grace perfects us 

by diverting and disturbing
the trajectories of our lives.
Gratia perficiat naturam, true.
But often it is the case
that this means gratia turbit naturam:
grace disturbs nature,
prodding and poking it 

in unexpected directions.
And here we see the natural family
prodded and poked and disturbed,
by the closed circle of kinship
being broken open to become 
the graced family of disciples.

But Jesus is suggesting something 
even more disturbing.
The graced family of disciples
can become simply another version
of the closed circle of natural kinship
unless it orients itself away from itself,
unless is becomes the sign
of the glory of the Kingdom.
We Thomists can focus so much 
on gratia perficiat naturam
that we forget that 
gloria perfeciat gratiam:
glory perfects grace.
And like grace perfecting nature,
it perfects by disturbing:
gloria turbit naturam.

After gesturing to the gathered disciples
Jesus says “whoever does the will 
of my heavenly Father 
is my brother, and sister, and mother.”
This “whoever” suggests to me that,
when grace gives way to glory, 
those of us counted among the redeemed
might well be surprised 
by who we find there with us.
As important as the community of disciples is
as a sign and foretaste of the Kingdom,
that sign must always point away from itself 
to the greater reality of the Kingdom—
the new creation whose scope is God’s secret.

Gratia turbit naturam
and gloria turbit gratiam,
and thanks be to God for that,
for the presence of grace and the hope of glory
with which the Spirit inspires us
ought to prod and poke us 
out of our closed circles
and into the wild mystery of divine love.
May God who is merciful
have mercy on us all.

16th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Wis 12:13, 16-19; Rom 8:26-27; Mt 13:24-43.

VIDEO

Have you ever thought:
we could fix what is wrong with the world
if only we could get rid of those people?
Admit it.
You have had that thought.
We all have.
We might fill in the blank 
represented by those people
in different ways—
conservatives, liberals,
fascists, communists,
immigrants, nativists, 
peaceniks, warmongers,
feminists, misogynists,
people who cut you off in traffic
or talk in the movie theater,
those who like the Latin Mass
or the music of Marty Haugen—
but we all have people we think
the world or the Church
would be better off without.

The problem with eradicating those people
is made clear by Jesus’s parable today:
good and bad, 
wheat and weeds,
children of the Kingdom
and children of the evil one,
grow up together in the world
and in trying to eradicate the bad
you risk eradicating the good as well.
We can see this pretty clearly 
if we look at human history:
from the French Revolution 
to the killing fields of Cambodia,
in attempting to create an ideal society,
we human beings create terror instead,
uprooting the good with the bad.

But the problem is deeper than that.
It is not just that those people live mixed in
with the good people of the world,
and we can’t eradicate the bad
without eradicating the good;
the problem is that we often have trouble
distinguishing the good from the evil.
The word that our translation 
renders as “weeds”
is in fact the name 
of a specific weed: zizania—
a weed that looks very similar to wheat.
To untrained or hasty eyes
the two are indistinguishable.
Likewise, the children of the Kingdom
and the children of the evil one
might be indistinguishable 
to our human eyes,
and the problem with thinking 
those people are the problem
is the problem of
distinguishing good from evil.

And we often fail when it comes 
to taking the measure 
of goodness or badness.
We mistake the bad for the good
and the good for the bad.
In today’s Gospel, 
between Jesus’s parable 
of the wheat and the weeds 
and the explanation of it that he
offers to his disciples,
St. Matthew’s Gospel provides 
two other short parabolic sayings:
the kingdom of God 
is like the tiny mustard seed
that becomes a large bush,
and the kingdom of God
is like the bit of yeast 
that leavens the whole dough.
A mustard seed is very small,
and yeast—
a single-celled organism—
is even smaller.
If the kingdom of God
begins as something so seemingly insignificant,
something so small as to escape our notice,
something that needs time 
to germinate and to leaven,
surely we might miss its presence
within another person.

Perhaps someone’s goodness
is a small, hidden trait
that we do not see.
Perhaps the seed of the kingdom 
is buried within 
a life of struggle and failure,
a difficult personality
or the legacy of poor choices.
Perhaps a child of the Kingdom
looks to us like one of those people.

Mark Ji Tianxiang was a Chinese Christian
who lived at the end of the 19th century.
He had become addicted to the opium
he used to treat a stomach ailment,
For thirty years he was denied the sacraments
because clergy at the time saw addiction
as a sign of moral weakness.
Yet though he was denied 
absolution and communion
he faithfully attended Mass daily,
no doubt crying out to God
with inexpressible groanings,
shamed by his weakness and failure.
Perhaps some of his fellow Christians thought: 
this man could have been a saint
if only he weren’t one of those people, 
the addicts who have wasted their lives
indulging their appetite for drugs.
As it was, he was seen by them
as a weed among the wheat,
a social plague whose eradication 
could only make the world 
a better place.

In the year 1899, the so-called Boxer Rebellion—
an anti-Western and anti-Christian movement—
broke out in northern China.
Mark Ji Tianxiang and members of his family
were seized and imprisoned
and told they would be executed
if they did not renounce their Catholic faith.
Mark remained steadfast in his faith 
in Christ and his Church,
even though that Church had denied him
the grace of the sacraments for three decades. 
He asked to be executed last,
so that no one else would have to die alone.
On July 9, 1900
he watched his family members 
go to their deaths one-by-one
as he sang the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary
to strengthen and encourage them,
until he himself was finally beheaded.

A hundred years later
he was canonized as a saint
by Pope John Paul II.
Through the passage of time
the holiness hidden during his life
by the struggle of addiction
was now revealed.
The tiny mustard seed had become a great bush;
the bit of yeast had leavened the whole loaf.

We would like to think we could fix 
what is wrong with the world
if only we could get rid of those people.
But who are those people?
Maybe it is not the person addicted to drugs
or the person who cuts me off in traffic
or the person who votes 
in a way I disapprove of
or whose customs and language 
are alien to me.
Maybe it is I myself, 
who presume to judge.
Maybe we, 
who judge by appearances,
in haste and in ignorance,
are those people.

We certainly can and must 
judge actions to be good or bad;
but the judgment of souls?
Jesus’s counsel in his parable
is that we leave that judgment up to God,
the one who searches hearts,
the master of might 
who judges with clemency.
He will send his angels 
in his own time
to execute his judgment
and eradicate evil,
but woe to those 
who would rush that judgment.
For the mustard seed needs time to germinate;
the yeast needs times to leaven the loaf.

So let us pray 
for those children of the Kingdom
who suffer the judgment 
we pass in our ignorance.
Let us pray for ourselves,
who stand condemned 
by our own ignorant judgment.
And let us pray that God, 
who is merciful,
might have mercy on us all.
St. Mark Ji Tianxiang,
pray for us.