Pastoral Reflections 7-26-26 - The 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time Msgr. Don Fischer Download

Original Airdate: July 30, 2023
1 Kings 3:5, 7-12 | Romans 8:28-30 | Matthew 13:44-52

Oh God, protector of those who hope in you, without whom nothing has firm foundation, nothing is holy, bestow in abundance your mercy upon us and grant that, with you as our rule and guide, we may use the good things that pass in such a way as to hold fast even now to those that ever endure. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever, amen.

I want to begin my homily by going back to the very beginning, Adam and Eve. That original mistake they made, the original sin, is very interesting. It needs to be understood clearly, and what I believe they were doing was something that’s so natural to human beings in a lower level of consciousness. They wanted to be their own gods. That’s exactly what they said. They listened to a lie that said, “You can be just like God. You can be him. You don’t need him. You’ll be like him, autonomous.” And that’s a wonderful way of imagining one of the core spiritual struggles we have in this world. Are we in charge of our whole life? Are we the ones responsible for everything we do? It’s so easy, if you just listen to the Old Testament, to realize that God can give you pretty clear notions of what you should and should not do. The church is very good at telling us what to do and what not to do, and that’s helpful. But in a sense, it leaves out the most exciting, the most wonderful, the most beautiful, the most valuable thing that we have in our relationship with God, and that is his indwelling presence. He wants to be a part of us.

So let’s look at this gospel, because when Adam and Eve were sent away from the garden, they entered the earth, and there was a statement that God made to Adam. He said, “You’re going to be ⎯ work’s going to be hard.” And he, of course, used agrarian images. He’d be plowing the fields, and there would be thistles and all kinds of struggle and difficulty in raising plants, and then you’d just have the food, and you would eat it. And it’s not a bad image of just the way we can sometimes get into a way of believing or a way of thinking life is just a lot of work, a lot of drudgery. We’ve got to do this, we’ve got to do that, and it’s difficult. And then we get a certain benefit from all the work we do. It feeds a part of us. It certainly takes care of our existence, but as far as our longings and our soul and our heart, it’s not very fulfilling just to be able to finish the task, though it’s enjoyable to do a good job. So what is it that this gospel then is talking about, when Jesus, knowing our heart so perfectly ⎯ he said, “What’s you’ve got to understand is that, in this world that I’ve given you, there is something hidden. It’s actually ⎯ you can find it in the very life you’re living, in the work you’re doing.” And every now and then, you might find something that you hit in your work, and usually it’s sometimes a dark time. And all of a sudden in that time, you discover something that you never saw before, a treasure, something wonderful, some insight that you have that life is good, life is full, life could be wonderful. It’s so valuable, because it gives you that ability to not get bound into a kind of dark drudgery of life. I hear people saying, “I don't know if I want to have children today, because the world is so dark and so conflicted, and we’re going to go through a horrible experience with the planet, and I don’t want to bring a child into this world.” Imagine saying that, and I know people say it. I’m not judging them for saying it. It’s an easy thing to feel, but where’s the hope in that kind of statement? And finding this treasure that Jesus talked about in the parable is finding something that changes everything, so much so that everything you have you let go of. All the things you were focused on you let go to a sort of soft focus, and you’re on this thing, this treasure. And that treasure is hard to describe, but I’m going to try. There’s also an image in this parable of a pearl. It’s beautiful. There’s something about the beauty of life. What I think Jesus is talking about is there’s a way of seeing the world where there is so much abundance and so much life and so much enjoyment of the beauty that’s all around us. That’s what I would call grace, grace coming into us.

Listen to Paul when he’s talking about our relationship with God. Go back to the way it was with Adam and Eve. They just thought they could be what God is and went on to do their work, but here Paul is describing what he’s learned from his intimate relationship with God through Jesus speaking to him. And he’s saying, “Look, here’s what you have to understand. You were known before you came into this world.” “I knew you,” God said. “I know you. I made you a certain way. I know exactly everything about you, and I’m going to do something. I am going to call you into life, all you into birth, and then what I do, when I call you into birth, I’m going to do something for you. I’m going to justify you. I’m going to take away everything that separates from you, in the sense that sin does create a kind of separation. I’m going to make sure that never happens. No sin of yours is ever going to separate you from me. So I’m going to call you into this world, justify you by forgiveness, and then I want you to be my glory ⎯ my glory. I’ll glorify you.” What is glory? Uranius said it so beautifully. Mankind fully alive, fully engaged in the work that God has given them, giving life to those around him, being fruitful. That’s the glory of God. That’s what he wants. He wants you and me to live in this world as we’re intended to, to be a little bit ⎯ this goes so strong ⎯ about saving people, and I don’t mean saving people by talking them into religion, all that. I’m just saying you’re there to have an impact on the people around you, and when you feel that that’s the essence of who you are and that you can feel what that feels like, because it’s so much a part of your human nature ⎯ it’s how you were made. You’re predestined for caring for people, and that can be done in so many ways. It doesn’t mean necessarily ⎯ somebody who’s doing something for humanity that has nothing to do with contact with a person is still doing something compassionate and empathetic, because they’re doing it for the good of human beings.

So then you look at Solomon, and David was the greatest of all the kings. He was amazing. Most kings, and Solomon included, never really fulfilled their obligations to God. They all turned away from him, so many of them, and that’s what happens when you get power and fame and all that. Human beings aren’t made for that, but what he does do in the beginning, he goes back to his humanity, and he turns to God and says something so beautiful. “Look, you’ve given me a job that I cannot do. I don’t feel I’m capable.” That’s what I would say when God says to me, “I want you to be compassionate and save the people. Help me heal people around you.” I’m too selfish. I’d rather just do something else, but when God heard that prayer from a human being, his response is the response he gives to us when we discover this treasure, and this treasure is his gift of his presence inside of you and inside of me. I don’t know what to say. I have too many responsibilities, all those things. I’m not capable of doing this work. I’m not capable of giving this homily. I’m not, but if I trust in you, if I believe in this treasure that I have, this energy, this life force in my heart resonating out of it to other people, I can be doing that, even unconsciously, without having to worry about whether I’m doing it or not, but it’s my intention. Solomon’s intention was what God was so thrilled with. Here is a human being, among all the human beings that want to be gods, who wants to do the work that I want to do.

And what I think we’re asked to understand in the mystery of the incarnation is that, when Paul says that we are made in the image of Jesus, that’s what he’s talking about. We think the image of Jesus is to be crucified. Well, there’s that work there, but we think it’s about being perfect. Well, we’ll be better. No, but the real thing that Jesus is is a manifestation of who we are and what our destiny is: human beings dwelling with this divine presence in an organ that can think, that can feel, that can talk to the brain and get it to do things. It can ⎯ this heart can resonate out of its very center, three feet of an electromagnetic fiel...