The Kingdom of Heaven

On the 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time, we hear the familiar term Kingdom of Heaven. It must be quite important because we hear it often; but do we clearly know what it refers to?

Other similar terms are: the Good News, the Gospel, Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, Salvation History, God’s plan of salvation and so on. In a nutshell it means God’s direct plunging into our predicament. Simply put, God is so loving and so caring that he cannot stand the poor choices people make; their wanderings, their fruitless searches, their sighs, their pain, their dying.

Hence, in the Old Testament, God decided (with mixed success I might add) to guide his people to make the right choices, to follow his commandments, to fully embrace his covenant. Finally, in the New Testament, he decides to become flesh like ours, to experience exactly everything we experience every day, including our frustrations, our tears, our death in order to lead all of us back to himself, back to Life. 

This project is about the Kingdom. This is what, once again, Jesus wants to share with us today. To really understand the riches, the impact, the significance of what he is telling us, we should take these three short parables together. (Mt 13:44-52) The treasure, which a poor man happily stumbles upon, underscores the poverty of our human resources, our confusion, our restlessness, our modest efforts and even more our meager achievements before we find the infinite richness of God’s rule.

Some people rely on money, success, recognition, clout, fame, trust in political figures, even exotic stuff like transcendental meditation, nature worshipping, or any other weird fads, all with mixed results—at best. Jesus assures us that it is only when we stumble upon his Kingdom that we will feel so overwhelmed by its beauty and richness that we would be ready to sell everything to enjoy it. We would sacrifice any other source of security in order to accept God’s rule over our hearts. The “catch” is quite evident: for this to happen, everything else we own must be somehow “given up.” And that is the mother of all risks one can take! But without that risk there is no way we can enjoy God’s rule over us.

The second parable instead describes God’ driving desire.  n it, God, depicted as a merchant, is not stumbling at random upon something precious, but he sets out with a deliberate design to get hold of fine pearls. Jesus stresses the comforting fact that the Father is always looking for us, we are the precious pearls he is after, because on each one of us there is a price tag of an enormous value: the priceless blood of Christ Jesus. So, while we go through life with a sound sense of direction; while we might be church-goers, God-fearing people, Catholics in good standing, all of us may be blessed with the good fortune of getting to discover the Kingdom of Heaven and be willing to sacrifice everything to become part of it. 

God is systematically, relentlessly looking for us non-stop because he is determined not to lose any of us. However, a true selection must take place. It is as final as the selection of keeping the good fish hauled ashore and the tossing of the inedible one! 

Now, can any of us attending this Holy Mass claim that he/she has yet to stumble upon the unfathomable treasure that the Kingdom of Heaven is? So, it is time now to make up our mind. The choice is truly a question of life and death. Eternal life or eternal death. To “sell everything” to make that treasure truly ours, i.e., to consider God’s all-encompassing rule over our minds and hearts means something so consuming that it entails our uninterrupted decision to value the Kingdom more than the money, the means, the things we need to make a dignified living and more than our dearest human affections.

Thus, whenever we find ourselves hesitant in choosing the Kingdom above anything and anyone else, the certainty that we are priceless in the Father’s heart and mind should be sufficient to make us comfortable to “sell everything” for the Kingdom of Heaven. At the end of our life, may the angels select us for the endless life of Heaven.