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Sacred Things, Sacred Hearts
There is one verse in today’s first reading that almost takes us by surprise. The prophet Jeremiah says: “They will in those days no longer say, ‘The ark of the covenant of the LORD!’ They will no longer think of it, or remember it, or miss it, or make another.” (Jer 3:16) If you were an Israelite hearing those words for the first time, they would have been shocking.
The Ark of the Covenant was the holiest object in Israel. It held the tablets of the Law given to Moses. It was the sign of God’s covenant and the symbol of his presence among his people. It accompanied Israel through the wilderness, stood in the Holy of Holies in the Temple, and reminded the people that God dwelt in their midst. So why would Jeremiah say that one day people would no longer even speak about it? Certainly not because the Ark was unimportant. It was profoundly important.
But it was never the destination. It was always a sign pointing to something greater.
Jeremiah goes on to say: “At that time they shall call Jerusalem the LORD’s throne.” Notice the movement. God’s presence is no longer focused on a single sacred object. It begins to embrace an entire people. That promise prepares us for the Gospel where Jesus tells the parable of the sower and explains that the seed is the word of God. The question is no longer, “Where is the Ark?” but, “Where will the Word take root?”
Some hearts are like the path. The Word never enters. Some are rocky. The Word begins to grow but has no roots. Some are crowded with thorns. The cares of life choke it. But some hearts are good soil. There the Word takes root where it grows and bears fruit thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and a hundredfold.
The Ark represented God’s presence. Jesus wants God’s presence to dwell in the human heart. The New Covenant is not centered on an object but on lives transformed by the living Word. That is why Jeremiah can say there will be no need to make another Ark. The sign points to a greater reality which when it arrives, the sign has fulfilled its purpose.
Most of us have things that help us draw close to God: a favorite Bible with worn pages, a rosary that has accompanied us through years of prayer, a crucifix hanging in our home, a church where we have celebrated baptisms, weddings, funerals, and countless Masses. These are precious gifts. They shape our memory and nourish our faith. The Church treasures sacred objects because they point us toward the sacred mysteries they represent.
But Jeremiah gently reminds us that even the holiest objects are never the goal. Their purpose is to lead us into a living relationship with God. Jesus tells us where that relationship finally takes root: not in wood overlaid with gold, not in stone buildings, not even in beautiful religious objects but in the human heart.
The true question is not whether we possess holy things. The true question is whether God’s Word has found good soil within us. Has it made us more patient? More forgiving? More generous? More faithful? More like Christ? Because in the end, the most sacred place on earth is not simply a beautiful church or a treasured religious object. The most sacred place on earth is a heart where Christ is welcomed, cherished, and allowed to bear fruit.
Today, as we receive the Lord in the Eucharist, let us ask for the grace to become that good soil, to allow his Word to sink deeply into our lives, so that God’s presence may not only dwell among us, but truly dwell within us.
Image credit: Christ’s Appearance to Mary Magdalene after the Resurrection | Alexander Ivanon | Russian Museum | PD-US
The Net Cast Widely
This coming Sunday is the 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time. “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea, which collects fish of every kind.” The net pictured here is a large dragnet, usually about six feet deep and up to several hundred feet wide, positioned in the lake by boats and requiring several men to operate (hence the plurals of v. 48). The picture is realistic, portraying an ordinary event with no surprising twists: The net brings in “every kind” of both good and bad fish, which are then sorted, the good being kept and the bad thrown out.
Whatever the original meaning of the parable, Matthew’s own ecclesiastical application already appears in the telling of the parable itself. The bad fish are called “bad” (rotten, sapra). Clearly the fish are fresh-caught so “rotten” seems inappropriate. The same word was used four times previously in Matthew’s description of bad “fruit” (works) presented by Christians. There it is easier to assess.
It is likely that “bad” refers to fish that lack the fins and scales noted in Leviticus 11:9-12. If the fish caught were eels or the Galilee catfish (eel-like in appearance), they would be forbidden fish. Of course, the fish could be too small or simply considered poor in taste. Hence the need for the sorting.
This parable then, like that of the “Wheat and Weeds.,” is one of judgment. It echoes not only the separation and destruction of the wicked, but also the motif of a mixture of good and bad until the time of final separation. The dragnet is inevitably indiscriminate in what it catches. As long as the fish remain in the lake, and indeed in the net, they remain undifferentiated. It is only when they come up for final scrutiny that some will be preserved and others destroyed
The Parable of the Net Explained
This interpretation is very like that of the parable of the weeds, vv. 36-43. Like the preceding interpretation, it concentrates entirely on the fate of the wicked, whose destiny is to be cast into the furnace of fire, with weeping and gnashing of teeth—all typical Matthean language for eschatological judgment, but not appropriate to fish, which are buried or thrown back into the water, not burned. The interpretation, allegorical as it is, does not represent the net to be the church, the fishers to be evangelists, etc. Matthew seems intentionally to forego the obvious opportunity to relate the parable to the story of the call of the fishers in 4:18-22. The parable is not a picture of evangelism, “fishing for people,” but a parable of final sorting and separation. [Boring, 1994, 314]
Image credit: The Pearl of Great Price, by Domenico Fetti, 17th century | Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Bilddatenbank | Public Domain
Forgotten Love
There is something deeply moving in the way God speaks at the beginning of today’s first reading: “I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, how you followed me in the desert.” God remembers the beginning. He remembers when Israel trusted him, when the relationship was fresh, when the people followed him into the wilderness with little more than his promise to sustain them.
The image is almost like that of a bridegroom remembering the first love of his bride. And then comes one of the saddest questions in all of Scripture: “What fault did your ancestors find in me that they withdrew from me?” God is not really asking; He knows what happened. This is a lament, the sorrowful question of someone whose love has been taken for granted.
God had brought his people out of slavery. He had led them through the desert. He had given them a fertile land. Yet once they entered that land and began to prosper.. And they began to forget. They had the priestly rituals, the sacrifices, the Law and even the great symbols of God’s presence: the Tent of Meeting and the Ark of the Covenant. But somewhere along the way, they stopped looking for God – or worse yet just assumed He would be there… there when needed. In the between times….meh.
In the Gospel, the disciples ask Jesus why he speaks to the crowds in parables. Jesus responds by quoting the prophet Isaiah: “They look but do not see and hear but do not listen or understand.” The problem is not that God has stopped speaking. The problem is that hearts are paying attention. The people have stopped listening.
Today was not the first time you’ve heard these readings. Were you paying attention to more than the words or were you waiting for the homily to tell you what it all means? At that point you’re listening to the homilist. A heart that is open hears the voice of God within the story, the reading and within the homily. An inattentive heart grows dull and hears only words.
Jeremiah describes how that dullness begins. It begins when people abandon “the source of living waters” and dig for themselves “broken cisterns that hold no water.” A cistern was meant to collect and preserve water. But a cracked cistern slowly loses everything placed within it. That is Jeremiah’s picture of all the things we expect to satisfy us apart from God.
Success can become a broken cistern. Possessions can become a broken cistern. Approval, comfort, entertainment, control, even constant busyness can become broken cisterns. They may hold our attention for a time, but they cannot satisfy the deepest thirst of the human heart. And the tragedy is that the more we depend upon those substitutes, the less able we become to recognize the living water when it is offered to us.
This can happen even in the spiritual life. We may still come to Mass, still say familiar prayers, receive the Sacraments and more. Yet familiarity can slowly replace attentiveness. We may know when to stand, sit, and kneel, but stop expecting God to speak. We may hear the readings, but no longer ask, “Lord, what are you saying to me today?” We may receive the Eucharist, but forget the wonder that the Lord himself has drawn near. The greatest danger is not always that we abandon the faith dramatically.Sometimes it is that we remain outwardly close while inwardly losing our sense of wonder.
But today’s readings also contain hope.
God begins by saying: “I remember.” Israel forgets, but God remembers. The people wander, but God remembers the covenant. Their love grows cold, but God remembers their first love and calls them back. That is how God deals with us as well.
He does not remember our failures in order to hold them against us. He remembers the person we were created to become. He remembers every sincere beginning, every act of trust, every moment when we allowed him to lead us. And he continues to invite us back. Not merely back to religious routine. Back to relationship, to attentiveness, to the living water.
Today, perhaps our prayer can be very simple:
- “Lord, restore in me a listening heart.”
- Help me not merely to hear your Word, but to receive it.
- Help me not merely to look, but to see.
- Help me not merely to practice the faith, but to love you again with freshness, gratitude, and wonder.
For the tragedy of forgotten love is not that God stops loving us. It is that we forget how deeply we have always been loved.
Image credit: Christ’s Appearance to Mary Magdalene after the Resurrection | Alexander Ivanon | Russian Museum | PD-US
In case you might be interested….
A great number of the good folks who subscribe to the FriarMusings blog receive the daily email(s) as posts are published. And so, rarely use the website to access content. So, in case you might be interested… the website displays the posts from newest to oldest, but there is also a menu system which allows you to access groups of posts.
“Francis of Assisi” is a gateway to 23 posts which cover the life of the saint and is a good way to get a detailed yet still beginning entree into his story.
These links give you access to detailed commentaries on each of the Sunday gospels across all the liturgical years, although I will admit I have been better about keeping the commentaries updated on the parish website.
“The Pacific” is a place to access the series on the Asia-Pacific War (1937-1945). “World War II” is the first series (written in 2025); “World War 2” is the follow-on series written in 2026.
Just case you might be interested.
Two Parables
This coming Sunday is the 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time. “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant searching for fine pearls. When he finds a pearl of great price, he goes and sells all that he has and buys it. Matthew apparently intends the parable of the treasure to be interpreted together with the parable of the pearl, which immediately follows. The two parables do have common features: (I) In each case only a brief vignette of a crucial situation is given, without enough details to evaluate them as realistic stories. The interpreter should, therefore, be wary of filling in the gaps from pious imagination, but concentrate on what the parable does, in fact, portray.
(2) The primary common feature is surely central to the meaning of each: The protagonist goes and sells everything for the sake of the one thing. This is the action of both the plowman and the merchant. This movement of the story as a whole is to be compared with the kingdom of God, for the kingdom is “like” neither the “treasure” of v. 44 nor the “pearl” of v. 45, but in each case somehow like the story as a whole. In each case, the protagonist acts with the single-minded response of the “pure in heart.” From the story in Mark 10:17-31, Matthew and his community had long known of the kingdom’s demand of “all,” and of one who had failed (cf. esp. Mark 10:21, where selling everything and giving it to the poor is connected with true “treasure”).
R.T. France [France, 2007, 541] notes that the two parables are also different: (1) The plowman is doing his regular work, not looking for or expecting anything special, when he comes upon the treasure quite by accident. The merchant is actively seeking, knows what he is looking for, and still finds something beyond all his expectations. The kingdom can become real in either way (cf. 9:2, 22). (2) The great joy of the plowman is emphasized, but is altogether absent from the merchant. This does not mean that the merchant’s selling everything in order to obtain the pearl was joyless, but it does mean that (subjective) joy is not the main point of either parable. (3) What the merchant did, although it may not have measured up to everyone’s understanding of common sense, was unquestionably legal. The same cannot be said of the plowman, whose action may have been questionable, both legally and morally (we are not given enough details to know for sure). The disposition of buried treasure found on someone else’s property was widely discussed in Roman legal discourse. Some of Matthew’s readers may have expected a law-abiding plowman to have reported his find to the owner of the field rather than cashing in on it himself. Sensitive contemporary readers may wonder about the ethics of cheating the owner of the field out of his treasure, even if it was perfectly legal. The story does not legitimize the man’s actions. Jesus was certainly able to use questionable actions of characters in his parables to picture the urgency of acting to gain the kingdom while the opportunity is there (cf. Matt 12:29’s use of breaking-and-entering imagery, and more subtly, Luke 16:1-13).
In the story of the pearl, there is no moral or legal question at all, but still a surprising and provocative action. In the first-century Mediterranean world, the pearl was often a symbol of the highest good (as diamonds sometimes are in modern Western culture). Thus salvation is pictured in the Gnostic “Hymn of the Pearl” as the finding and safe return of a pearl lost in an alien land. Some scholars see both the parable of the treasure and the parable of the pearl as advent/reversal/action, expressed in the parallel sets of verbs in vv. 44 and 45-46: finds/sells/buys.” The advent of the kingdom, sought for or not, brings about a reversal of values, leading to the crucial action that obtains the new. This action, puzzling and out of step with those who live by the old values, is central in each of these parables. [France, 2007, 541]
Image credit: The Pearl of Great Price, by Domenico Fetti, 17th century |Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Bilddatenbank | Public Domain
Already Seeking Us
Most of us think of the spiritual life as our search for God. We pray because we are looking for him. We come to Mass because we want to draw closer to him. We read Scripture because we hope to hear his voice. We struggle through doubt, grief, and confusion, trying to find some sign of his presence. Today’s readings gently turn that idea around. They remind us that before we ever began searching for God, God was already searching for us.
The first reading from the Song of Songs begins with longing: “On my bed at night I sought him whom my heart loves.” The woman rises and goes out into the city. She searches the streets and squares. She asks the watchmen whether they have seen the one she loves. Her search is persistent because it is driven by love. That same longing appears in Mary Magdalene.
She comes to the tomb early in the morning, while it is still dark. She discovers that the stone has been removed. Later she stands outside the tomb weeping. Twice she is asked: “Woman, why are you weeping?” Her answer reveals the depth of her sorrow: “They have taken my Lord, and I don’t know where they laid him.”
Mary is searching. She searches the tomb. She questions the angels. She looks at Jesus himself but does not recognize him. She assumes he is the gardener and asks whether he has carried the body away. Mary is looking for the Lord, but she is looking for someone who is dead. Her love is real, but her expectations are still shaped by the tomb.
Then everything changes. Jesus speaks one word: “Mary.” That is the turning point of the entire Gospel. Mary does not recognize Jesus when she sees him. She recognizes him when he calls her by name. In that moment, the seeker realizes that she has been found.
Mary thought she was searching for Jesus. But Jesus was already there. He knew her grief. He had seen her tears. He knew exactly whom she was seeking. And before she could fully understand what had happened, he called her by name. This is one of the deepest truths of our faith.
Our desire for God begins in God’s desire for us. Our search for God is always a response to the God who first comes looking for us. Whenever we feel the desire to pray, God is already at work within us. Whenever we feel the need to return after drifting away, God is already drawing us home. Whenever we come to Mass burdened, distracted, grieving, or uncertain, we may imagine that we have come looking for God. But the deeper truth is that he has already come looking for us.
Like Mary Magdalene, we do not always recognize him. Grief can cloud our vision. Fear can keep us staring at the tomb. Disappointment can convince us that what has been lost can never be restored. Sometimes Christ stands very near, and we still mistake him for someone else.
Yet he continues to call us. Not merely as members of a crowd. Not anonymously. He calls us by name. The Good Shepherd knows his sheep, and his sheep recognize his voice. When Jesus says, “Mary,” her sorrow is transformed into recognition. But the encounter does not end there.
Jesus tells her: “Go to my brothers and tell them…” Mary moves from searching to encountering, and then from encountering to being sent. That is the pattern of discipleship: We seek. We are found. And then we are sent. Mary becomes the first witness of the Resurrection. She goes to the disciples with the simple proclamation: “I have seen the Lord.”
That is why the Church has long honored her as the Apostle to the Apostles. She is sent not because she understood everything immediately. She is sent because she remained. She remained near the cross. She came to the tomb while it was still dark. She continued searching even through tears. And when the Lord called her name, she responded. Mary Magdalene’s story is the story of every disciple.
We search for Christ in prayer, in Scripture, in the Eucharist, in the lives of others, and sometimes through long seasons of darkness. But the great surprise of the Gospel is that our search is always preceded by his. Before we called upon him, he knew our name. Before we found him, he had already found us. Before we reached for him, he was already standing near. Perhaps that is the grace we should ask for today. Not simply the grace to search more earnestly, but the grace to recognize that Christ is already searching for us.
And when we hear him call our name, may we respond as Mary did—not by remaining at the tomb, but by going forth to say with our lives: “I have seen the Lord.”
Image credit: Christ’s Appearance to Mary Magdalene after the Resurrection | Alexander Ivanon | Russian Museum | PD-US
A Pearl of Great Price
This coming Sunday is the 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time. Pearls were as highly valued in the ancient world as they are today, and were a conspicuous way of displaying wealth (1 Tim 2:9; Rev 17:4; 18:12, 16). Huge pearls are the gates in the symbolic new Jerusalem (Rev 21:21). But there is a subtle difference between this and the preceding parable.
The man, likely a hired workman, who obtains the buried treasure risks everything to possess it, but he gains wealth upon which he can live. The pearl merchant is presumably a person of some substance already having great wealth. He impoverished himself to acquire something supremely beautiful and valuable which he could admire and display but could not live off unless he sold it again.
What the two parables share in common is the issue of priorities. The fact that what the dealer had to sell included presumably other, lesser, pearls might however have led the hearers to reflect on the value of the kingdom of heaven in relation to other competing ideologies; once you have it, you need no other. Hence the emphasis on the fact that this is just one pearl, whose value eclipses all others put together.
Image credit: The Pearl of Great Price, by Domenico Fetti, 17th century |Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Bilddatenbank | Public Domain
On this day in history….
Neil Armstrong became the first person to step foot on the moon…It used to be a given that people remember the day that man first walked on the moon on July 20, 1969, watching black-and-white images on television. But now most Americans don’t know where they were because the 61% of Americans hadn’t been born yet.
What we ask of the Shepherd
The prophet Micah closes his book with a prayer that is both simple and deeply moving: “Shepherd your people with your staff, the flock of your inheritance, that dwells apart in a woodland, in the midst of Carmel. Let them feed in Bashan and Gilead, as in the days of old.”(Micah 7:14)
At first glance, these ancient place names Carmel, Bashan, and Gilead may seem like little more than points on a map. But to the people of Israel they stirred the imagination. Carmel was known for its beauty and fertile slopes. Bashan was famous for its rich pasturelands where flocks could graze in abundance. Gilead was remembered for its healing balm and its lush countryside. Together they formed a picture of life as God intended it: a flock that was safe, well-fed, and flourishing under the care of its shepherd.
What is remarkable is that Micah prays these words after a long book filled with warnings, injustice, and the consequences of Israel’s unfaithfulness. After exposing the people’s failures, the prophet does not end with condemnation. He ends with hope. His prayer is not, “Lord, punish your people.” It is, “Lord, shepherd your people.” That difference tells us something profound about the heart of God.
Throughout Scripture, the image of the shepherd is one of God’s favorite ways of revealing himself. The shepherd does not simply own the sheep; he knows them, protects them, searches for them when they wander, and leads them to places where they can flourish. God’s deepest desire has never been merely to correct his people, but to guide them into the fullness of life.
As Christians, we cannot hear Micah’s words without thinking of Jesus, who called himself the Good Shepherd. He came not only to rescue the lost sheep but also to lead them into abundant life. He knows the paths that lead to peace, even when we insist on wandering into places that leave us weary and hungry.
Perhaps that is why this ancient prayer still speaks so powerfully today. Many people feel as though they are wandering through a woodland—surrounded by uncertainty, noise, loneliness, or fear. We long for solid ground, for green pastures, for a place where our souls can rest.
Micah reminds us that God’s answer is not first a place but a person. The answer is the Shepherd.
The Christian life is not simply about finding our own way through the forest. It is about learning to recognize the Shepherd’s voice and trusting him to lead us. When we do, he brings us to places of nourishment we could never have found on our own. Not only the rich pastures of Bashan or the beauty of Carmel, but the deeper pastures of faith, hope, mercy, and peace.
In the end, Micah’s prayer becomes our own: “Shepherd your people.” It is a prayer our world still needs. It is a prayer our families need. It is a prayer each of us can whisper every morning. And it is a prayer the Good Shepherd delights to answer.
Image credit: iStock | BogdanV | photo ID:1651309580 | downloaded July 20-2026
Hidden Treasure
This coming Sunday is the 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time. “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field, which a person finds and hides again, and out of joy goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” Buried treasure is the stuff of popular stories in every age and while out “pirates” no longer sail the Seven Seas we seem content with stories of lottery winners. Given Israel’s location at the crossroads of major powers to the north and east and to the south (Egypt) there is a long history of wars and rumors of war playing out upon the promised land.
“Buried treasure” was a realistic possibility. Before banking was generally established, to hide wealth in the form of coins, metals or jewels in a jar or box in the ground was a recognized way of securing it, especially in times of crisis; the famous Copper Scroll from Qumran Cave 3 lists the locations of huge caches of precious metals and other buried treasure. But consider Mt 25:25, where a talent of gold is buried. The “talent” was equivalent to almost 20 years of daily wages and would have been a “treasure” worth finding.
In the face of a rumor of war or war itself, a family might well bury their valuables. If no one survived the battles or sieges, there was indeed buried treasure to find. There were also rabbinic guidelines for what one did when finding such treasures. Even if you were the rightful owner of the land, you were obligated to make a reasonable search for the rightful owner of the buried valuables. Failing to find the original owners, the land owner could rightfully take possession of the treasure.
Presumably in this story the current owner of the field was unaware of it. The finder (presumably a worker employed by the land-owner) really has no immediate rights to the treasure even after he legally purchased the land. But he understands what is at stake and sells all that he may obtain the treasure. Many commentators have noted that it is the same with humanity – we have no right to salvation – it is an unmerited gift from God – so when it comes, grab it without hesitation or qualm.
It seems that the man’s action is dictated by pure self-interest, as would be the person who opts for the kingdom of heaven. The “sacrifice” of all that is sold is no hardship: it is done out of “delight,” not out of a sense of obligation. Once the kingdom of heaven is truly understood, nothing else can compare with it in value. One should also noted the OT theme of wisdom as being like hidden treasure (Prov 2:4; Job 28; cf. with a rather different twist, Sir 20:30). [France, 2007, 541]
Image credit: The Pearl of Great Price, by Domenico Fetti, 17th century |Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Bilddatenbank | Public Domain
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