Episode Transcript
[00:00:12] Speaker A: Welcome to the Blessed Sacrament Homilies Podcast, where our mission is to help everyone recognize and experience the presence of God. We hope you are nourished and encouraged by the Word. Thank you for joining us.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: The Lord be with you and with your spirit. Reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew. Glory to you, O Lord Jesus said to his disciples, the kingdom of heaven is like 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.
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.
The Gospel of the Lord. Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
Not that long ago, I came across something you don't see that often anymore.
It was a bit of literature on the Dale Carnegie classes, if you remember those, how to Win Friends and Influence people.
And I've spent my whole adult life trying to win friends.
So I figure I might as well continue with that now.
So I'm going to share with you an insight I have about all of you. You're all liars.
Now, did I win any friends with that comment?
Probably not.
And I'll back it up a little bit. Virtually all of you are liars. There could be an exception.
Now, when I say that, I'm not saying that you lie to the people you love, that you lie to your friends, even you lie to your co workers.
But I do think at least once in a while you probably lie to yourself.
The reason why I can say that with confidence is because that is exactly what I do.
We can all tend to lie to ourselves.
We can convince ourselves that what we desire, if we ever, ever achieve it or possess it, will bring us peace and happiness and fulfillment.
Now, for some, those things that we think will bring us fulfillment are property. If I get the shiny car or the cottage up in Harbor Springs, if I get that boat I've been looking at, or if I simply get this amount of money in the bank, I will be happy.
For some, it is fame.
For others it is relationships.
For others it's being popular and having a lot of friends.
And we can think that if we finally get to that stage, all of a sudden my life will be fulfilled.
But what happens every single time is the moment we achieve whatever that goal is and we sit back and reflect. We go, wait, that didn't do what I thought it was going to do.
It didn't bring me what I was looking for.
And most of us then tell ourselves A second lie, we think something else is going to do it.
So we start to put that out there as our goal, the thing we want to achieve, the thing we want to possess.
And if we manage to get to that point, we find out, my God, that didn't do it either.
And many of us will do that literally hundreds of times in our life. We will set these things out there thinking they're going to make us happy, and they don't do it.
Well, that true pearl of great price, that thing we want to possess and hold, is revealed to us in this gospel.
The reality of what will do all those things we desire is the kingdom of God.
And living in and being a part of that kingdom.
And the kingdom of God is one where love and mercy and compassion and hope are shared without counting the cost.
Because that is how God interacts with each one of us.
And how God expects us to interact with one another, to share the gifts we've been given with the world.
And if we can convince ourselves at least a little bit that that truth is the reality, all of a sudden we find that that contentment, that hope, that peace is right there in our midst.
But also, if you follow the same pattern I've followed, is that you get little glimpses of that, little moments that say, yeah, that's really true.
And then you quickly forget and you go back to the same old habits that didn't work before.
I've become convinced that, much like Solomon, that wisdom is there for each one of us.
It just takes time. It takes life experience to get to.
And if I can make it to 117, I'll finally get there.
