17th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Fr. Anthony Brankin
Gospel: Gospel: Matt. 13:44-52 “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field.”
Full homily text: Jesus never seems to actually define what the Kingdom of heaven is, does He? Perhaps He is expecting us to make the definition ourselves knowing that if we discover its definition, then perhaps we will remember it.
Walk on the spiritual path along with St. Francis de Sales and St. Jane de Chantal into the Love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Are you a lay person interested in plunging more fully into a way of daily devotion? Or considering a vocation to the monastic Visitandine tradition? Go to Visitation Spirit website.
First of all, the Kingdom of Heaven is not a regular Kingdom. It is not a republic or democracy, or any form of government. It is not when the Republicans are in charge—and not when the Democrats have the levers of state at hand. The Kingdom of God in heaven is not even what we sometimes call Christian civilization. Nor does it refer to Catholic Kings and Queens who were saints.
Certainly Catholic politicians have serious obligations—under God—to put into public law Catholic morality. But even that is not the kingdom of God.
Because the Kingdom of God is something that pertains to each of us individually and personally and spiritually. The Kingdom of God in heaven is when we allow God to rule in our lives. In other words the Kingdom is when we personally follow the will of God and the teachings of God as they come from the Church.
A supernatural reality
When it is His voice we hear before all others, and when it is His rule we follow—we are living in the Kingdom of God. Things that our politics and politicians do or say or enact into law may help us or hinder us in living up to the Kingdom of God in our hearts—the ruling structure may help bring us closer to or farther from the Kingdom of God—but they are not the Kingdom. The Kingdom of God is a spiritual reality. It is a supernatural reality.
But the problem is that our modern ways of thinking and doing have made it more and more difficult to establish the Kingdom of God in our hearts and souls—and precisely because more and more people do not believe in the objective reality of the supernatural.
As if God did not exist
That means then that the Kingdom of God—because it is supernatural—either does not exist as far as moderns are concerned or it is irrelevant to their lives. This is what is called a secularist society. Secularist people—whether they believe in God or not—make all their decisions and choices as if God did not exist—as if the supernatural was not Real. God and considerations of God and implications from the supernatural (like what the Church might teach) really have no place in what we say and do about the life in which we live. Therefore to talk about the rule of God in our lives—to talk about the Kingdom of Heaven is meaningless to so many modern people.
For modern people, the world in which we live is the measure of all value. That which defines the worth or the goodness or usefulness of something is the world. If it pleases us or if it works or if it makes us money or accomplishes our will, then it is good. There are no other standards than this world.
Secularists might believe in the supernatural world—go ahead knock yourself out—but they make their decisions about what to do and how to do it—based on what they know and value in terms of this world. The Kingdom of God may be valuable—but not to them.
Alliance of non-believers
The real problem then is not the government and whether we have republicans or democrats in power—it is not even communism vs. capitalism. The overarching problem in our world is secularism because it creates a whole culture that utterly ignores God. They create a ruling alliance of the non-believing government, the non-believing media, the newspapers, the radio and television and internet, the entertainment industry, the high financiers and social engineers—and even the legal system of lawyers and judges and justices and law schools who protect it all.
Eventually then all the things we see, the things we read, the things we value, the things that entertain us—are all given to us courtesy of non-believing secularism. This is the Kingdom of Man (so to speak) and it is so distracting that we don’t even notice the Kingdom of God anymore. The Kingdom of Man is so loud and boisterous and superficial and appealing to our lowest instincts that it makes it next to impossible to even hear the voice of God, let alone follow His will in our lives.
What happens next is that we begin to internalize the values of the secularists. We begin to make what is good to them—good for us. We make their values our values—we appropriate and bring deep inside what they have taught us—and we don’t even know we are doing it.
TVs in every room
We can tell when that is happening when we find ourselves getting excited about things that the newspapers want us to get excited about—like celebrities and scandals and trashy people who do trashy things. We will know they are getting to us when we cannot get enough of all the garbage they are feeding us; and then to read about it and talk about it and think about it and dream about it becomes our whole world.
This is the point when we put televisions in every room in our house and spend hours watching what we call “our shows;” watching what the Kingdom of Man wants us to see and hear and think about and obsess about. In a word, the secularists are “manipulating” us. They want us to respond and react the way they want us to. And it works!
The more we become good moderns and good secularists—even if we go to Church on Sunday—the Kingdom of God becomes more and more remote from our lives—more and more irrelevant.
We begin to use their vocabulary and their categories and their ways of thinking and acting. We know that we have already totally surrendered to them on issues like divorce and birth control—and young people getting married in court—or not even getting married. It is just the way things are now.
Going along with gay marriage and abortion
When they tell us that moral issues like gay marriage or abortion are political and do not belong in church—we go along with it. We accept that our place in this society is that we must go along in order to get along.
Think about it—the original pagans, our ancestors, the ones who worshipped idols, the moon, the sun, bulls and goats— were, in their way, closer to the Kingdom of God than are most of our modern secularists—precisely because those pagans had no problem believing in the reality of the supernatural. The Kingdom of God would not have been an alien concept to them.
But we live among a people who do not believe in anything invisible and so religious concepts mean nothing to us—at least to the degree we are modern and secularist.
Repentence? Like, Dude!
What could some 25-year-old modern young man living in Lakeview and fooling around all day with his IPOD and texting love notes to his girlfriends make of a missionary’s call to repentance from sin, or the need for God to forgive us. “Repentance? Forgiveness?… I’m like… Dude! What’s this guy talking about?”
The ancient pagans may have believed in false gods—but at least they believed in something.
If we do not believe in the reality of the supernatural and therefore doing God’s will as it is taught to us by the church— then everything is therefore permitted: financial crimes against poor people, war and invasions, torture and bombings, abortion and euthanasia. This is the Kingdom of man. The Kingdom of God is invisible and builds churches and hospitals. The kingdom of man is visible and builds prisons and bombs.
So I think that the key to survival and salvation is to keep believing in the objective reality of the supernatural—To believe in the beauty of the invisible God and Jesus and the saints and angels and heaven and hell and grace and salvation— the Church and the Pope and all the beautiful teachings of the Church. Only in this way will the Kingdom of God exist in our lives and therefore in the world.
As real as flowers
A young couple whose marriage ceremony I performed last Saturday came into the rectory Tuesday night. It seems that the godmother had forgotten—on Saturday—to bring the flowers that the couple was going to present to the Virgin Mary. Well the flowers finally arrived and they asked if they could bring the flowers to the Virgin. It was that important to them that they give their gift and prayers to Mary—even two days later. Before another day ran out.
Now, that is the Kingdom of God—where the supernatural is as real as those flowers. When we believe that deeply in the supernatural, we will most certainly be doing His will in our lives—and actually be living in the Kingdom of heaven.