An Understanding Heart

July 27, 2008

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

By Rev. Joe McCloskey, S.J.

I serve you in the midst of the people whom you have chosen, a people so vast that it cannot be numbered or counted. Give your servant, therefore, an understanding heart to judge your people and to distinguish right from wrong. For who is able to govern this vast people of yours? 1 Kings 3:8-9

The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field, which a person finds and hides again, and out of joy goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, 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. Matthew 13:44-46

Piety

My portion is the LORD; I promise to keep your words. I entreat you with all my heart: have mercy on me in accord with your promise. I have examined my ways and turned my steps to your decrees. Teach me wisdom and knowledge, for in your commands I trust. Psalm 119:57-59, 66

Study

http://www.usccb.org/nab/072708.shtml

All or nothing is a real choice in life that few are aware of, but all are offered. All is God. God is all there in any moment of our life. God is the pure lover. God never offers less than all his love. God's love is so all embracive that there is never less than all of God's love in any moment of our life that we are living. What am I willing to offer for all of God's love? The catch in the offer is all of self. God would give us the fullness of his love in his Son. The question is always; "What part of me am I holding back?"

Spirituality is the putting on the mind and heart of Jesus. God reveals to us in Jesus the fullness of His love. Our response to God's love is in our closeness to Jesus. Our love for Jesus is the way we live out the Commandments God has given us. Our love shows itself in the way we put others before ourselves. Jesus loved in the same way he was loved by the Father. He gives us all of Himself. We are gifted people because out study of his life reveals to us what God expects of us. Jesus has loved us just as the Father has loved Him. We are to love one another even as Jesus has loved us.

Our reading the Scriptures gives us an understanding heart to judge right from wrong. Solomon asked for wisdom to be able to judge his people well. God gives us in our awareness of his Son the bottom line of wisdom. In the humanness of Christ we have the fullest statement of the mystery of God. What we know about Christ gives us insight into the plan of God for us. We have been baptized into his life and what we learn from the Scriptures teaches us how to live his life. We have been created in the image and the likeness of God and discovering ourselves in Christ is to have the wisdom of realizing the fullness of God's plan for us. Christ is our pearl of great price. To ask as Solomon did for wisdom is to ask for deeper awareness of who Christ should be in our lives.

Action

St. Paul challenges us to be conformed to the image of Christ. God gave us this destiny and in Christ we are called. Our connection to Christ justifies us. In our closeness to the "Tree of Glory" we also will be glorified. Christ is our firstborn brother and in him we are brothers and sisters. We have the best of all reasons to give away our lives to one another and to treat each other as the greatest of all treasures.

What we do for the least one we do for Christ. He is the be-all of every true treasure and the end all of our existence when we try to love as he did. Then the treasure is no longer buried in a field. It is out there in front of us for all to see in the old and the new of the goodness of a life lived in Christ.