Homily for Sunday, 30 July 2023– Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

Readings of the day: 1 Kings 3:5, 7-12; Psalm 119:57, 72, 76-77, 127-128, 129-130; Romans 8:28-30; Matthew 13:44-52

If you were able to ask for and receive anything you wanted, what would you ask for? Have we ever thought this about our prayer: What do we most frequently ask of God in prayer?

This is what happens to King Solomon in today’s reading from 1 Kings. God invites Solomon “in a dream” to ask him for anything he desires: “Ask what I should give you,” God says to Solomon. Imagine if God offered any ruler, public leader, or politician today to give that person anything they desired. What would that leader ask of God?

Here Solomon recognizes the significance of the choice before him. It is far from the first or only time in the Bible when God communicates with somebody important in a dream—think of the two Josephs, one in the Old and one in the New Testament; Jacob’s Ladder vision and the dreams Daniel interprets in the Old Testament. And this is far from the first or only time in the Bible when somebody significant is overwhelmed, like “a little child” before this kind of encounter with God. I think of Jeremiah, who is “only a boy” when God calls him to be a prophet.

These two frequent biblical motifs occur together at the beginning of Solomon’s reign in 1 Kings: First, God speaks to Solomon in a dream. And, second, Solomon, “only a little child” who does “not know how to go out or come in” (a Hebrew expression for complete ignorance), is overwhelmed that God should invite him, “Ask what I should give you.”

What is not so frequent is God inviting somebody, even somebody important, to ask for anything that person desires. More often God tells us what it is acceptable or not to pray for. I think of Jesus’ introduction to the Our Father with, “This is how you are to pray.” Jesus says to his disciples in the Gospels, “Ask, and it will be given to you.” Yet not even Jesus’ prayers are always accepted. In the depths of his passion, in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prays, “If it be your will, let this cup pass from me.” Yet Jesus will suffer and die on the cross for us anyway.

All this shows how important and well-regarded Solomon is in God’s eyes. Solomon is already wise before he asks God for wisdom, “an understanding mind to govern [God’s] people” Israel. It is as if God has given Solomon his greatest desire, wisdom, before he asks for it. God anticipates Solomon’s desire for understanding, wisdom for good governance, and all Solomon has to do to please God is to meet God halfway, in one sense, on this: Ask God not for “long life or riches,” but the wisdom for which God knows ahead of time Solomon will ask.

Long before the “kingdom of heaven” was ever a reality or even a concept in Scripture, as it is in Jesus’ parables we hear from the Gospel of Matthew today, the kings of ancient Israel knew that God was the true ruler of Israel. Kings like Solomon and his predecessor David knew that they were stand-ins for God, anointed by God to rule according to God’s will for the good of the people of Israel on earth.

Of course, Israel’s kings were sometimes far from perfect in ruling according to God’s will for Israel. Solomon seems to have learned from some of David’s mistakes when God invites him to ask of God anything he wishes. Solomon acknowledges that Israel is “a great people, so numerous that they cannot be numbered or counted.” One of King David’s greatest sins was to have the people of Israel counted in a census. (Censuses are common in many if not most countries and not at all sinful; we should understand David’s action, and Solomon’s reference to it today in 1 Kings, as an attempt to usurp God. Remember that God had promised Abraham that his descendants could not be numbered, so to try to number them would be both futile and sinful in the biblical imagination). Solomon wisely avoids a repeat of this sin of his father.

Solomon desires above all “an understanding mind” to rule Israel. His desire for “an understanding mind” at God’s invitation is really a desire for what he needs to rule, to inherit, to share in the reign of God, the reign or the kingdom that originates in heaven. This is why this is so significant that Solomon should ask for “an understanding mind”—for wisdom toward good governance—over “a long life or riches” or the lives of his enemies. Those other things for which Solomon could have asked God would not have been bad (the lives of his enemies maybe excepted); God would not have been displeased had Solomon asked for them. But Solomon would have been just an ordinary king: He might have been rich, or he might have lived a long life (which he did anyway; he matched the forty-year reign of his father David, the symbolic length of reign of a good king in Israel), but for what?

Solomon desires the kingdom of heaven. And to reign with God, he needs “an understanding and discerning mind.” He needs wisdom, first and foremost.

In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus encourages us at length to desire God’s kingdom of heaven above all else, much as King Solomon did. Other Gospels and writings in our Bible highlight the kingdom of God (or kingdom of heaven), and include Jesus teaching about the kingdom of God in parables or metaphors: “The kingdom of God is like”… But in Matthew’s Gospel, in Jesus’ teachings, there is an especially intense focus on “the kingdom of heaven” and what it is like, to encourage us to want it above all else.

Today is the third Sunday in a row at Mass in which we have heard from the same part of Matthew’s Gospel—Matthew, chapter 13—which is a long string of Jesus’ parables about the kingdom of heaven. Over these last three Sundays (in case anybody is counting) we have heard seven of Jesus’ parables about the kingdom of heaven from Matthew’s Gospel: The sower, the weeds among the wheat, the mustard seed, the yeast or leaven and, in just today’s Gospel reading, the “treasure hidden in a field,” the “pearl of great value,” and the net with many fish.

I think Jesus wants us to go to heaven, really badly! The question for us is: How intensely do we want to go to heaven, to inherit the kingdom of heaven God promises us in and through Jesus Christ? Do we want heaven, the kingdom of heaven, as much as God wants to offer it to us? A few minutes ago, I asked: If we were able to ask for and receive anything we wanted, what would we ask for? Maybe my questions should have been: Who here wants to go to heaven? And what are we willing to give to inherit a share in God’s reign, the kingdom of heaven?

I will presume wildly that all of us want to go to heaven. After all, we pray for heaven during every Mass and many times outside of Mass, when we pray the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy kingdom come.” So I will presume that God’s promise of heaven appeals to us.

And God’s promise of the kingdom of heaven to us is a free gift. It was a free gift to King Solomon: God invited him to ask for whatever he wanted: “Ask what I should give you.” God is inviting us to do the same as Solomon, as Jesus’ first disciples: “Ask what I should give you.”

Yet what are we willing to give for a share in the kingdom of heaven, a share in God’s reign over the universe everything in it? If we are shown a field with a treasure buried in it, will we sell all we have and buy that field? If “a merchant of fine pearls” shows us the pearl of greatest value, will we sell all we have and buy that pearl? Will we go fishing in the sea in which Jesus is telling us that the fish are of excellent quality, with only a few exceptions? That is, will we go out into our world, to our neighbours, to our workplaces, to our places of leisure, to our streets and attract still other people to the reign of heaven Jesus promises us by our joy and acts of kindness? (Because, let us face it, at the best of times fishing is unpredictable and even a little frustrating. So is evangelization, proclaiming and living God’s word, God’s invitation to us toward heaven, in a way that attracts still more disciples). Will we resist the temptation to be gatekeepers of who is worthy or not of heaven? Will we allow God and God’s angels, as our Gospel says today, to do the sorting of the good fish from the bad—and simply concentrate on and enjoy the fishing?

Sisters and brothers, we are here in the great divine showroom of the kingdom of heaven. Over here we have a field with a priceless treasure on sale for a real bargain, considering its worth. Over there we have somebody selling a pearl of unmatched value from an amazing pearl collection. And a little further over there we have somebody selling a once-in-a-lifetime fishing trip, all expenses included. In fact, God is offering us the entire showroom and everything in it: The field with its treasure, the pearl of great value, the great catch of fish. No riches we have now compare with the value of all that, of the kingdom of heaven. So let us make the big purchase. Any “understanding and discerning” mind would.

Homily for Sunday, 11 August 2019

Readings of the day: Wisdom 18:6-9; Psalm 33:1, 12, 18-19, 20-22; Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-19; Luke 12:32-48

19th Sunday in Ordinary Time

This homily was given at St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.

Have any of us ever delayed in accomplishing a task or making a decision? What was the reason for the delay? Did we delay because of fear or insecurity in acting or deciding to act? Have we ever been afraid of how somebody might judge us for an action or decision, and so delayed acting or deciding on something important? Have we ever feared a loss of control over a situation, or maybe a relationship, and so have delayed in acting or deciding something?

Have we ever had good reason to delay an action or decision? Good reasons for delaying an action or key decision might be that we have needed to take time to consult others who have expertise in the kind of action or decision we are making, or who may be affected by the action or decision we make. We might want to delay sending that biting e-mail or social media post when we are frustrated or angry. There can be good reasons to delay important actions or decisions.

But our readings today tend to favour people who decide or act with the most conviction and with minimal delay. The Book of Wisdom today takes us back to “the night of the deliverance [of the people of Israel] from Egypt.” These Israelites were, in many ways, ready to return home, led by Moses to Israel already by the time the LORD called them to leave Egypt. Wisdom says that this “night of deliverance was made known beforehand to our ancestors” and that “the deliverance of the righteous and the destruction of their enemies were expected by [God’s] people.”

The reading we hear today from the Letter to the Hebrews takes our memory back even farther than Wisdom, to the time of Abraham and Sarah. Hebrews praises the faith of Abraham and Sarah; that when Abraham and Sarah were called by God to act “by faith,” they did so decisively. “By faith Abraham obeyed” God when God called him and Sarah “to set out for a place… not knowing where he was going… By faith he stayed for a time” in this place. This was “a land [Abraham] had been promised” by God, but only as a stopover point on their way to a more permanent homeland. “By faith Sarah… received power to conceive” and bore a son, Isaac. From Isaac, as a reward for their faith Abraham and Sarah received the promise of descendants. But even these descendants, Hebrews says, would not see for many generations the fullness of God’s reward for their faith: The resurrection from the dead we as Christians believe is made fully possible by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Still, from at least the time of Abraham and Sarah, people have been acting “by faith”; decisively and with conviction that God has promised them (and promised us) eternal life; a permanent homeland in heaven with God. We hear from Hebrews that these long-ago generations, and every generation since, has had one fundamental longing in common that has driven us to act with faith; with conviction; without delay: We long for heaven. We, like our ancestors in faith, “desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one,” Hebrews says.

Like the Book of Wisdom and the Letter to the Hebrews, Jesus’ two parables we hear today in Luke’s Gospel, those of the Waiting Servants and the Faithful and Unfaithful Servants, also favour people who are ready; who act with decisive and faithful conviction. Jesus’ parables urge us to be ready to encounter God, “the master” of his parables. Jesus’ parables are full of strong, decisive action verbs: “Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet… You must also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”

Luke’s Gospel was probably written fifty or so years after Jesus’ ascension to heaven. By that time, the faith of Luke’s Christian community, a generation or two removed from those who had known Jesus personally, had become a bit slack. Jesus had promised to return at the end of time. And, well, the end of time had yet to happen, so writers like Luke, leaders of their early Christian communities, had to rally the people, to keep their faith ready and active. If we are able to understand how people in Luke’s time may have allowed their faith to become a bit slack, not as ready for Jesus’ return as they had once been, can we not understand how this may be an even greater challenge today, more than two thousand years after Jesus walked this earth?

We “must also be ready”: This invitation to faith; to convicted decisions and actions oriented toward our desired goal, heaven, is just as timely now for us as it was in the time of Luke’s Gospel. Today’s Gospel reminds me of an experience when I was about twelve years old and visiting my father in Montreal. Dad had been in Montreal, away from home for a year, on a course needed to begin his career in meteorology. One day, like most days Dad was on his meteorology course, he arrived home, exhausted from a long day’s studies, and set his clipboard on the end table in his apartment. I was constantly fascinated by the complicated math formulas that would fill the pages in Dad’s clipboard, so I would look in awe at Dad’s clipboard when he set it down on the end table. This one day must have been especially exhausting for Dad because, when I looked at his clipboard, thinking I would see some awesomely complicated math formulas, the page was completely filled with, “Stay awake, stay awake, stay awake”… written in capital letters!

“Stay awake”… “You must also be ready.” I doubt that, on that day, Dad was anticipating the immediate return of Jesus, although the swift arrival of the end of time then might have relieved Dad’s exhaustion and boredom in that class. I may just now have given anybody here who is a student an idea for when we are bored or tired in class: Fill a sheet of paper with, “Stay awake, stay awake, stay awake”…

Whether we are simply trying to ward off exhaustion or boredom, or (at least I hope and I believe that, ultimately, we are as Christians) faithfully anticipating the promised return of Christ at the end of time, the message is the same: We “must also be ready… Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return.” “Stay awake”!

But to heed this call to action; to alertness to the presence of the Lord even now among us; to await heaven faithfully; to orient our decisions and actions with conviction toward the eternal life with God we desire can be easier said than done. Do we not often experience situations in our lives when it is best to delay: To “sleep on” or, better yet, give ourselves time to pray over a key decision or important message we need to communicate? In these kinds of moments, our delay in acting or deciding something important is anything but disobedience to the call of God’s Word today to faithful action; alertness; convicted orientation of our decisions and actions toward heaven. On the contrary.

And our discernment of when it is better to delay, especially prayerfully, a key action or decision, or when it is better to act or decide immediately and decisively, is often difficult. From our hearing today of Wisdom, Hebrews, and Luke, might it seem to us that it was all too easy for the people of Israel to leave Egypt under Moses; for Abraham, Sarah, and their descendants, and for the people to whom Jesus addressed his parables in Luke’s Gospel to remain faithful, convicted, alert, and not to delay unreasonably? We know from the rest of the Bible that obedience to this urgent call from God was often difficult for all these people.

It is and will always be difficult for us, too, to remain faithful, convicted, alert, and to orient our actions and decisions toward our ultimate heavenly goal. This takes a commitment on our part to depend on God; to prioritize God and our relationship with God in our prayer and our worship as a community of faith above all else. In this way, we will remain faithfully and decisively alert to how God calls us to act in the concrete situations of our lives. We will be like the people of Israel whom Wisdom describes; like Abraham and Sarah; like those who “seek an unfailing treasure in heaven,” who are “dressed for action” with our “lamps lit”; like those who are constantly alert for the Lord’s final return for our salvation. We will be the people who “Stay awake”…

Homily for Sunday, 30 July 2017

17th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 1 Kings 3:5, 7-12; Psalm 119:57, 72, 76-77, 127-128, 129-130; Romans 8:28-30; Matthew 13:44-52

This homily was given at St. Clare and St. Alphonsus Churches, Edmonton, AB, Canada

If we were able to ask God for anything; if God were to say to us what he once said to Solomon and that we hear today, “Ask what I should give you,” for what would we ask God?

I am teaching this summer here in Edmonton at St. Joseph’s College of the University of Alberta. I know some teachers (and I have said this myself) who refer to the kind of question I have just asked as the famous, or perhaps infamous, “teacher’s leading question.” We know already, from our first reading today, that what Solomon asks for, wisdom to govern the people of Israel, pleases God. Solomon could have asked God for anything: “Long life or riches, or for the life of [his] enemies,” and God would gladly have granted it to him. Instead Solomon asks this of God: “Give your servant… an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil; for who can govern this, your great people”? To return to the classroom analogy, Solomon is like the eager and brilliant student, always the first to raise a hand, who gives us the best answer— although here there is no wrong answer to God’s initial invitation— “Ask what I should give you.”

To God’s invitation, there is a good answer, a better answer, and a best answer, and Solomon gives the best answer: “Give your servant… an understanding mind… able to discern between good and evil.” All we might need to do now, if God were to ask us to ask him for anything we wished, is to answer, “What Solomon said.” This is what makes God’s invitation to Solomon and to us to ask for anything a kind of “leading question”; the kind of question a teacher would ask students in a classroom, the correct answers to which the teacher already has in mind.

Solomon’s answer; his petition to God to give him wisdom and the ability “to discern between good and evil” is the best answer. Would it not be wonderful if more, if not all, the people who govern us; who hold public office or are otherwise in positions of power were to make Solomon’s prayerful wish more profoundly their own? This, though, does not mean that how we would answer God if God offered to give us anything we wished would not be a good answer or at least a good try. God invites us here, as he once invited Solomon, to be honest with ourselves, not only to give the answer we think would most please God (although pleasing God is important), but to answer from our hearts: What would we most desire if God were to invite us to ask for anything we desired?

What is wrong with asking, as perhaps God might have expected Solomon to ask, “for… long life or riches”? Nothing is wrong, essentially, with asking for these things. Might we also ask for peace in our world, our communities, and our families? Might we ask for God’s mercy toward the sick, the suffering, and those who have died? Might we ask for God to guide and protect our Church? If we were to ask, since it was apparently one of the options possible for Solomon, for the lives “of [our] enemies,” we might need to talk. We and God might need to talk…

Humour aside, these are only a few of the items on our “wish list” we might have if God were to offer to give us anything we desired. And every time we are at Mass, we offer God our wish list. We call this wish list, our list of petitions to God, the Prayer of the Faithful. “Lord, hear our prayer”… There is nothing wrong with this; in fact, to pray this way is to be encouraged and an important part of our Mass.

In our Prayer of the Faithful, in the dialogue we hear today between God and Solomon, in God’s pleasure at Solomon’s wish for wisdom and discernment, and in our daily prayers and petitions, we have a sense of what St. Paul says in his letter to the Romans: “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God.” In other words, we cannot go wrong if all our deepest desires stem from love for God and love for one another. And so go ahead; raise your hand up in class when the teacher asks one of those leading questions. Answer God’s invitation: Pray without worrying about whether you are asking for the right things. Be bold, yet be honest: What do you desire most? If you love God and neighbour, or at least are trying your best to love, there is no unworthy desire. There is no wrong answer. There is no bad prayer. After all, God did say to Solomon, “Ask what I should give you.” Here, God says the same to us.

Some of us may know the heartwarming childhood story one of the Church’s great saints, Thérèse of Lisieux, tells about herself in her autobiography, her Story of a Soul. One day, her sister Léonie (who eventually entered the Sisters of the Visitation; all the other sisters of the family became Carmelites in Lisieux) was giving away her toys that she had outgrown and no longer played with. Each of the sisters chose their favourite item from the giveaway basket. And then along came Thérèse, who announced “I want everything,” and then, as she says in The Story of a Soul, made off “without further ado” with the entire basket!

“Ask what I should give you”… “I want everything”! Later, St. Thérèse would refine her desire for “everything” into a desire to be everything for the love of God and of God’s people; of us. This once impish, sassy child would come to understand that “love included all vocations, that love was everything, that it embraced all times and all places; in a word, that [love] is eternal,” and that “in the heart of the Church,” she was to be “love.”

“All things work together for good for those who love God.” In Thérèse of Lisieux and King Solomon we have two prime examples of people who loved and desired God above all else. In loving and desiring God, they were able to proclaim boldly and honestly, “I desire wisdom and discernment”; “I want everything… In the heart of the Church, I shall be love.” In the same way God invites us to desire all that stems from love of God and shows itself in works of love toward one another. And God promises us that, for those who love; for those who desire love above all, “all things work together for good.”

Those who desire love will enter “the Kingdom of Heaven” of which Jesus speaks in the parables of our Gospel reading today. Those who desire love will find “the treasure hidden in a field” or the “pearl of great value” and will give anything up for it. Those who desire love will be found among the righteous; “the good” who will be saved, because “the Kingdom of Heaven” is where our desire for love will meet Love itself, God, who has created us to love as he loves us.

Heaven is the place for the bold and the honest; those unafraid to put up our hands first; unafraid of not having worked out the best answer yet when God asks us that leading question: What do you most desire? “Ask what I should give you.”

Lord God, we desire wisdom. We desire the grace to discern good from evil and to do good. We desire the entire basket of toys; “everything” that works “together for [our] good.” We desire the “treasure hidden in a field”; the “pearl of great value.” We desire to be saved. We desire eternal life with you in “the Kingdom of Heaven.” We desire love, O God. Show us to love. Show us, “in the heart of the Church,” in the heart of our world that thirsts for your love, to be love, for it is in being love that, embracing “all times and all places,” we have and are everything we most deeply desire.