Fr Ed Homily 7-25-20

The Kingdom of God

In the first reading of the first book of Kings, Solomon has a dream that God will give Solomon what he asks for. Solomon asks for wisdom. God is pleased with Solomon’s request. God says he will grant Solomon his request and give Solomon a wise and prudent heart. I questioned this. If Solomon asks for wisdom, and God says he will give Solomon wisdom, why does God give Solomon a wise and prudent heart? Wisdom comes from the mind, not from the heart, right? For the Jewish people, they realized that the heart must be involved in making careful and prudent decisions. The mind is logical, but people need to be treated with dignity and respect. The heart must moderate the decisions of the mind.

Therefore, to understand today’s gospel with the three parables, we need wise and prudent hearts. The first parable, the great treasure found in the field. The person found the treasure. If you had found the treasure, would you have buried it again? Does it make sense? If you found the treasure, why wouldn’t you take it and leave? Why bury it again? We need to remember that Jesus is telling listeners that the Kingdom of God is like a treasure found in a field. What has happened is that someone has found the treasure, the Kingdom of God. When you find the Kingdom of God, you are no longer the person you were before. You’ve changed. You won’t do things like you did in the past. The treasure is so great that you will sell everything you have to obtain this treasure.

The pearl of great value is discovered in a market. Again, you sell whatever you have to buy the pearl. But it is more important to realize that you will find the pearl of the Kingdom of God in strange places. We have to be prepared to find this pearl. And when we do, we must be prepared to recognize the pearl as the Kingdom of God that can come upon us at any time or any place.

As for the casting of the net, it collects the good and the bad. We should see it as the final gathering at the end of the age. The angels will do the sorting. Not everyone will be admitted into the Kingdom of God.

This is the most important thing. Where do you find the Kingdom of God? A field? A market? With questions like these, it’s important to look back at our first reading. God gave Solomon a wise and prudent heart. When we try to understand the gospels, we need to understand what the people of that time understood. It is a wise and prudent heart that looks to the Old Testament to understand the New Testament. The wise and prudent heart knows that it will find the Kingdom of God in the heart.

We will see the Kingdom of God with the eyes of our hearts, not with our minds. We know when God is present around us. We know when God is working through us. We know when God is working through others to help us. The great treasure, the great pearl, is the Kingdom of God in our hearts. That is why the last gospel prayer says that we must take the old and the new from the storeroom, which means that the Old Testament is a pre-figuration of what will come in the New Testament. We learn who God is through the old and the new.

May the Lord bless you, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.