The heart's true treasure (Pope Leo XIV / Anne Koester)

The heart’s true treasure is found
by loving the neighbor who walks beside us.

--Pope Leo XIV

    Seek joy by rummaging through your storeroom and bringing out the old and the new. And let us not only rummage in our own storerooms but in the storeroom of the Church; we will find there treasures to share but also the new that challenges us to broaden our ways of being Church in the world by leaning in with listening hearts, accompanying all persons, naming and eradicating injustices, caring for the earth, and boldly proclaiming the truth. This will show that we have listened to Jesus’ teachings about the reign of God. 

--Anne Koester 

Image source: https://www.thismorningwalk.com/blog/walking-with-friends
Quotation source 1
Quotation source 2

Listening to God's love (Henri Nouwen)

    Discernment is a spiritual understanding and an experiential knowledge of how God is active in daily life that is acquired through disciplined spiritual practice. 

   Discernment is faithful living and listening to God's love and direction so that we can fulfill our individual calling and shared mission. 

--Henri Nouwen 

Image source: https://www.cedarspringscrc.org/new-blog/2018/4/25/5-tips-for-hearing-gods-voice
Quotation source

What is the kingdom of God worth? (Fr. Patrick Michaels)

   You need to know how to be able to grow and to change and to open your heart, because the rule of God is never going to take you where you expect to go; the rule of God is going to take you where you need to go, where you can bloom, where you can expand and share all the wonderful things God has done in creating you. You have free will; you have the choice, just as Solomon did. We choose to build up God’s kingdom by sharing his love, or we choose to build up our own, our safety, our security, our closed, isolated places where our gifts never get realized and no one benefits from them. We get to choose, because God would have it no other way. Is the kingdom worth setting everything else aside for its sake? 

--Fr. Patrick Michaels,
Homily, July 30, 2023

Image source: Michele Desubleo, Portrait of King Solomon (17th c.), https://www.anticstore.art/105830P

Sifting and weighing (Dr. Wendy Wright )

     Discernment is a matter of attentive sifting and weighing, of sensing the weight and texture of decisions and the ripeness of the fruits that they produce, of being responsive to the divine wind from whatever direction it might come. Such discernment assumes a radical interior freedom. 

--Dr. Wendy Wright,
“Seeking God’s Will Together”

Image source 1: Severin Roesen, An Abundance of Fruit (c.1860), https://www.artic.edu/artworks/182381/an-abundance-of-fruit
Image source 2: Arturo Ricci, Woman Weighing Fruit (19th c.), https://www.wikiart.org/en/arturo-ricci/women-weighing-fruit
Quotation source

The inrushing of grace (Bishop Robert Barron)

    Jesus offers two parables about the kingdom of heaven. Let’s focus on the first one: “The Kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field, which a person finds and hides again.”  

 

   Sometimes God’s love is found that way. There’s a saying: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” Sometimes in the course of our everyday lives, something happens that vividly and surprisingly summons us to union with God. We realize, in a flash, what it’s all about. We weren’t particularly looking for it, but it found us. 

   That’s what Jesus is getting at today. As you walk through the fields of life, be open to the inrushing of grace when you least expect it. And when it comes, give up anything that holds it back. 

--Bishop Robert Barron 

Image source: https://www.daughterofdelight.com/blog/feeling-lost-and-alone-in-a-new-place-finding-hope-in-psalm-13-2azj4-5l5nw-a3jny-8x9r2-tw8ws-an4t8-8rmsj-jk98s-caxan-ka65d-36ja9-mtkxz-f98zn-l6wx8-bgsja-xyndn-pkbsw-65xt2
Quotation source

Sunday Gospel Reflection, July 26, 2026: More precious than thousands of gold and silver pieces...

More precious than thousands of gold and silver pieces…
What is our true treasure? 

     We have this ultra-positive image of King Solomon. But is it really justified? When, in the First Book of Kings, God appears to Solomon in a dream and says, Ask something of me and I will give it to you, Solomon requests an understanding heart to judge your people and to distinguish right from wrong. Sounds good, right? Sounds humble? But what will Solomon do with the gift – this treasure – he is given? In point of fact, Solomon will soon begin to marry foreign queens and build his own home before building the Lord a temple. 

    Moreover, Solomon’s desire to be able to distinguish right from wrong brings to mind Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden; their sin, after all, is to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God does affirm Solomon’s request as a way of affirming the humility with which it requested, but Solomon must then choose to use the wisdom he is given to fulfill God’s will, recognizing that he needs the Lord and the power of the Lord’s love in his life. This is the goal of the psalmist in Psalm 119: The law of your mouth is to me more precious than thousands of gold and silver pieces, he sings. Why? Because God’s commands (and laws and decrees) are God’s way of remaining close to us. Like the psalmist, Solomon needs to have a listening heart and to remain open to relationship with the Lord. Alas, this will prove harder than he imagines. 

    When all is said and done, our relationship with the Lord – our union with God – is our greatest treasure. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus tells his disciples four parables, each of which is meant to reveal something about the treasure that is the kingdom of heaven where we will be eternally in right relationship with God. There are different ways to pursue the kingdom. One person comes upon the treasure by accident, while another is actively searching for fine pearls. In every case, however, discernment is required to separate the good of life from the bad, in order to draw closer to God and deepen our relationship with him. 

    We cultivate that relationship in the here-and-now through our temporal relationships on earth. Paul reminds the Romans that all things work for the good for those who love God. We are called to be a community for each other in the Body of Christ, as we are conformed to the image of God’s Son. We are called according to God’s purpose, to fulfill his will, which is that all may be one. When we enter in to be in his Body, then his image is the image we set forth – not in judgment or domination, but in compassion and mercy. For that is his will: that his compassion and mercy might flow out from us, to his world – a true and powerful manifestation of his kingdom… on earth! 

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture Class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com

The Kingdom of God is... (Gerald Darring)

     The Kingdom of God is a space. It exists in every home where parents and children love each other. It exists in every region and country that cares for its weak and vulnerable. It exists in every parish that reaches out to the needy. 

     The Kingdom of God is a time. It happens whenever someone feeds a hungry person, or shelters a homeless person, or shows care to a neglected person. It happens whenever we overturn an unjust law, or correct an injustice, or avert a war. It happens whenever people join in the struggle to overcome poverty, to erase ignorance, to pass on the Faith. 

     The Kingdom of God is in the past (in the life and work of Jesus of Nazareth); it is in the present (in the work of the Church and in the efforts of many others to create a world of goodness and justice); it is in the future (reaching its completion in the age to come). 

     The Kingdom of God is a condition. Its symptoms are love, justice, and peace…' 

--Gerald Darring,
St Louis University,
Center for Liturgy

Image source: NGC 602, a young star cluster, from NASA, https://www.ncronline.org/spirituality/scripture-life/spirituality/solemnity-our-lord-jesus-christ-king-universe-kingdom-not
Quotation source