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, 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.

Homily for Sunday, 27 July 2014

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 The House of Mercy, a center for the homeless in Rochester, NY. My thanks to Sr. Grace Miller, RSM, for the invitation to celebrate Mass with the people of the House of Mercy.

If you were able to ask God for one thing‒ anything you want‒ what would you ask of God?

Our first reading speaks of King Solomon, one of the great people of the Old Testament, known especially for his wisdom. In our reading from the First Book of Kings, Solomon has just been made king of Israel. He is following in the footsteps of another great king, Solomon’s father David. And so would we hold anything against Solomon for being a bit unsure of himself and how he might lead Israel after the great reign of his father? I think not.

I can imagine Solomon, the brand-new king, as quite nervous as he begins his reign over Israel. And so God enters into the story of King Solomon; into Solomon’s dream. God makes Solomon an offer: “Ask something of me and I will give it to you.” Now, if God made you a similar offer, what would you ask of God?

If God were to offer to give me anything I wanted, I would ask for peace in our world. I would ask for an end to war, violence, and oppression. I would ask for an end to poverty; underemployment and unemployment; racism; homelessness. I would ask for justice, especially in our nation’s social policy toward migrants and refugees. What would you ask for if God were to offer to give you anything you asked for in prayer?

Solomon could have asked God for anything he wanted. Does Solomon ask God for “a long life”? No. Does he ask God “for riches”? No. Does Solomon ask God “for the life of [his] enemies”? No. Solomon asks God for “an understanding heart to judge [God’s] people and to distinguish right from wrong.”

God, we hear in our first reading, is so pleased with Solomon’s prayer for wisdom; for “an understanding heart” that God gives to Solomon more than he could have imagined. God says to Solomon, “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.”

As remarkable as Solomon’s prayer for wisdom is, when he could have asked God for anything, God’s reply is as though Solomon could not have asked for enough. Whatever Solomon could have asked for, God would have gone beyond his wildest expectations. And no matter what we ask for, how many of us think that God would do the same for us as God did for Solomon? How many of us think that, if we were to ask God for anything we wanted, God would go beyond our wildest expectations?

This is what the story of Solomon is about and what Jesus’ parables of the Kingdom of heaven in our Gospel reading are about: God going beyond our wildest expectations.

How many of us want eternal life; to go to heaven one day? I think that would be all of us. Jesus asks us in our Gospel reading from Matthew to imagine what the Kingdom of heaven is like. Heaven is “like a treasure buried in a field,” Jesus says. “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.”

Let us picture heaven in our minds for a moment. What is it like? What is the treasure we would go to any effort to find; for which we would buy the field in which the treasure is buried? What is the pearl that we would seek at any price?

Every time we gather to celebrate our Mass; our Eucharist; when we pray the “Our Father,” the words that Jesus has taught us, we pray for this treasure; for the pearl of great price; for the coming of God’s kingdom. We pray, “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” We pray, on the one hand, that we will be received into God’s kingdom and, on the other hand, that God’s kingdom will come to us; a kingdom of justice, mercy, and peace here on earth. 

We have an idea; an image of what God’s kingdom might be like, and yet, while we live here on earth, the fullness of what heaven is a mystery; an image. Our understanding of it is incomplete. We are like Solomon, the new king asking for “an understanding heart… to distinguish right from wrong” so that he might govern his people wisely. God hears Solomon’s prayer; is pleased with it and exceeds Solomon’s wildest expectations. The same will be true of us when we pray for the kingdom of heaven.

God’s kingdom is like a treasure or a pearl that we seek at any price. God invites us to ask for heaven; to ask for eternal life, even if we cannot yet know fully what we are asking for. But let us not be afraid to ask. God will work with our partial understanding; will be pleased with our prayer for eternal life because we are creatures made for eternal life; made for life in and with God. Our God will forgive us; will set us back on our way to the eternal life we seek should we sin; should we fall short but then seek reconciliation with sincere hearts.

And if we ask for eternal life; if we pray to God, “Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done”; if we ask for heaven as though we were seeking the greatest treasure or “the pearl of great price,” God will go beyond our wildest expectations. We will be received into the Kingdom of heaven we seek; the Kingdom of heaven for which we pray, but for now can only understand and imagine in part.

Homily for Thursday, 13 February 2014– Ferial

Thursday of the 5th week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: 1 Kings 11:4-13; Psalm 106:3-4, 35-36, 37, 40; Mark 7:24-30

What does it mean for us to be a people favored by God? After all, we pray in our Responsorial Psalm: “Remember us, O Lord, as you favor your people.”

Jesus expands for us time and again what it means to be a people of God; a people favored by God. Our Gospel reading today follows disputes between Jesus and the crowds or the Jewish authorities over the interpretation and following of religious teachings: To what extent ought a good Jew to follow the many laws of their faith so that they might remain in God’s favor?

Yet this question misses Jesus’ point: Although a religion’s teachings are important to follow (please do not interpret what I am about to say otherwise), to be in God’s favour is not primarily about following these teachings to the letter, especially without understanding the reason for these teachings: the good of our relationship with God and with one another.

To show this, after the disputes with the crowds and religious authorities, Jesus goes to Tyre; into non-Jewish territory. There he drives the demon from the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter. That Jesus had even gone to be with the people of Tyre, let alone performed a miracle there, would have been scandalous to many Jews who consciously observed their faith. I can imagine the murmurs of many Jews of Jesus’ time: “Why is Jesus going to Tyre? Those people are not God’s chosen people; We are. How dare Jesus associate with them!”

Sadly, this mentality continues to exist even among many Christians today: Those non-Catholics; those non-Christians; those atheists… They are not us. They are not favored by God. They are not God’s people. Is it right to associate with them? Can they be saved?

Not long ago, to the shock of many, Pope Francis said that yes, “even atheists”; certainly non-Christians whose hearts are with God can be saved.

That our hearts be with God is of primary significance. The Syrophoenician woman’s daughter is cleansed of a demon because the woman’s heart is with God, even more than perhaps anyone but God himself knows. In our first reading, Solomon is not reproved primarily for failing to follow religious teachings or for allowing his wives to worship other gods, although he does and this is clearly wrong. No, we hear that Solomon’s “heart was not entirely with the LORD, his God.” This is his greatest fault; his greatest impediment to favor with God.

May our hearts, then, be with our God. Let us pray that the same may be said of those who do not share our Christian faith but who will good and do good. As one people of God, then, may we be remembered, and may those who do not know or believe in God, together with all of us, be commended to God’s mercy. “Remember us, O Lord, as you favor your people.”