July 26, 2020: 17th Sunday in Ordinary time
1 Kings 3: 5, 7-12; Romans 8: 28-30; Matthew 13: 44-52
Have you lived these moments:
- Someone defrauds you and takes away from you whatever you have, though it might not have been much, but that is all what you had! You let go of it, for you have no other go.
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Someone requests you for a help and you render it most willingly, only to later come to know that the person never deserved that help, or the person actually has been exploiting you! You shrug your shoulder and go your way.
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Someone is in dire need and you very generously lend a hand; but as soon as the person got to a better state of affairs, the person turns indifferent to you. You begin to wonder, why on earth in the first place, did you choose to help! Anyway, you did what you did, you would do it further too.
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Someone whom you know is against you or has no corner soft in his or her heart for you, but you continue to do good, help out and remain charitable, however feeling bad that nothing returns. You keep doing it anyway.
Have you lived an experience of this nature? Can there be a rational explanation for these …however hard you try they will only remain empty excuses. But the world considers foolish what these persons consider valuable whereas, that which matters the least to these, matters the most to the world.
It is all about Choices! The choices we make determine who we are! And the who we are conditions the kind of choices we make. Yes… you read it right. They are one and the same. The choices make persons! That is why today we see the insistence, be it in the first reading or in the Gospel, about the radical choices we need to make for God and things that pertain to God – the reasons are two: one, because that is how we become persons of God; and second, because God has made a choice for us (as St. Paul reminds us in the second reading).
God’s Choice: We are faced with so many situations in life, when we have to make the right choices. The entire discussion on what is the right choice and why we have to make the right choice, finally boils down to one fact: we have to choose to do the right thing, because God has chosen us. God chose us long ago, predestined us, called us and has justified us, waiting to share God’s glory with us – our task is to remain worthy of that glory. That is why we are called to choose the right things at the right time. The foundation, the motivation and the criterion of our choices is, naturally, God’s choice. That is, the fact that God has made a choice for us!
Strange Choice: The sad fact is that our choice for the right, might sometimes look strange for the others and a sadder fact is that we are conditioned by this and we prefer not to look strange. We unfortunately decide to go with the flow, ride with the wind, float with the current and conform to the world – but the Word gives us a statutory warning: do not conform to the world (Rom 12:2). Of course, a choice like those of what Jesus speaks of in the parables he narrates today, might look strange for an outsider – the man deciding to sell everything and buy the land he was tilling, the other who sells everything to possess one pearl that he found… those looking at it from the galleries will sometimes even laugh at it, but the one who is immersed in the reality will know exactly what he or she is making a choice for. That is how it is, if only we have tasted the Lord, and if only we long for the Lord, we would not mind making strange choices, we would not mind appearing strange beings! Nothing really matters, when we know we have the Lord with us!
Ultimate Choice: All the individual choices we make in life are destined towards the ultimate choice, the choice for God! The choice of Solomon, was something like that. When God asked him to choose something, he asked God for the grace of making the right choice! How clever of him!!! Discernment, is the capacity to make the right choice, the capacity to think right, the capacity to look at everything and understand them all from the perspective of God, which alone is the right knowledge. Solomon’s choice was the ultimate choice, that is why when he made that choice, he had everything that he could have! The ultimate choice is the choice for the mind of God. When St. Paul invites us to put on the mind of Christ, he is in fact inviting us to a way of life that is ordered after the mind of God – the right choices at every situation we find ourselves in, in spite of the biased judgments that might pressurise us from all around. The Ultimate choice is the choice for God!
The choice of Solomon, the attitude that St. Paul speaks of and the acts of the persons speaks of in the parable, they are of this kind. They seem to be losers in the eyes of the world. But in fact, they gain something that the world knows nothing about. It is based on these choices that they will be sorted out at the end of times.
Certainly, we have heard the story of that girl who was asked to choose whatever she wishes in the palace of the king. Whatever she touched, it was told, would belong to her. While everyone else with her was running helter skelter touching what they could imagine was precious, this girl stood her ground filled with thoughts. They asked her, ‘haven’t you made your choice?’ She said, ‘in fact I have’ and walked up to the king and held his hand. What could be more precious than the king in the palace of the king – she became the crown princess!
We may have everything, but if we lack God on our side, soon we will feel the emptiness all around. When we choose God, we choose everything! What do you choose?
Fr Antony Christy is a Salesian Priest from 2005, who has a Masters in Philosophy (specialisation in Religion) and a Masters in Theology (Specialisation in Catechetics). He is currently pursuing his doctoral research in Theology at Salesian Pontifical University, Rome. Walking with the Young towards a World of Peace and Dialogue is the passion that fires him.