Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Seventeenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, A, Vigil

July 29, 2023

 

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/7.29.23_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday, when Jesus will give us two inspiring, I like to call them twin, parables that sum up the approach we should have to him and to our faith. The parables are simple enough to understand. The first is of a poor peasant finding a buried treasure in the midst of his work in someone else’s field. There were no real banks to speak of in ancient Palestine. People would often bury things of value in secret locations in fields. There was no sense of “finders keepers, losers weepers”; whatever was discovered in a field belonged not to the discoverer but the owner. That’s why the man needed to buy the field. It’s quite obvious that the one selling had no idea that an ancient treasure was buried on his property. He didn’t place the same value in the field as much as his peasant did and so he sold it. For the peasant, selling all he said in order to get the money to buy the field was nothing compared to what he knew he would be gaining.

* The second parable is of a wealthy merchant searching for precious pearls, going from place to place in pursuit of something truly valuable and beautiful. Finally, he found the pearl of his dreams, whose worth was unsurpassable, and whose owner valued it less than the money he would get in exchange. And so the wealthy merchant sold all that he had before — doubtless houses, gems and other valuables — to obtain that pearl of great price.

* I’d like to focus on three spiritual lessons Jesus wants us to learn from these parables.

* The first quality is an insatiable desire for the treasure of the kingdom of God, which is basically an unquenchable thirst for God. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told us, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Mt 6:21). He declared in that same Sermon that many of us seek to “store up for [ourselves] treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal,” but he wanted us to “store up for [ourselves] treasures in heaven,” a treasure not measured in clothing that moths can wreck, metals that rust can corrode, or money that thieves or taxes can take. Jesus is communicating that our heart must be set on God, and not just in general, but more than star athletes want to win another championship, ambitious politicians seek to win higher office, and a man in love does everything he can to win over and marry the woman he can’t stop thinking about.

* The second is a recognition of where the treasure of the kingdom can be found. The merchant in the parable knew the places he needed to go, and so he crisscrossed the ancient world visiting the shops and markets where pearls would be sold. The farmer wasn’t so much searching for a buried treasure, but when he discovered it in the middle of his workday tilling new parts of the landowner’s property that had not yet been farmed, he knew what to do. Where do we go to find the treasure? We find God in personal prayer, we find him in the Sacraments, especially Mass and confession. We can find him speaking to us in Sacred Scripture. We find him radiantly shining in the lives and writings of the saints. We find him living within us in the truly Christian moral life with virtue.