Today's Gospel

Your Invitation to Abundance

Welcome back to Radical & Relevant. Today's reading is from the Gospel of Matthew, 13:10-17. "Then the disciples came and said to him, 'Why do you speak to them in parables?' And he answered them, 'To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them, it has not been given. For to him who has, will more be given, and he will have abundance. But from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away. This is why I speak to them in parables because seeing they do not see and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. With them indeed is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah, which says, 'You shall indeed hear but never understand, and you shall indeed see but never perceive. For this people's heart has grown dull, and their ears are heavy of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should perceive with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their hearts and turn for me to heal them.' But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. Truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see and did not see it, to hear what you hear and did not hear it." So we talk about each day choosing a word or a phrase or an idea that jumps out at you that the Holy Spirit uses to get your attention. And often we speak about ideas and phrases. Rarely do we speak about words, but the word that jumped out at me today was abundance. "And he will have abundance." I think that God lives in abundance. God is abundance. And he invites us to abundance, not necessarily the abundance we might choose for ourselves. But gratitude creates an awareness of abundance and ingratitude or entitlement focuses on what is missing, what is lacking, potentially scarcity. And so I just hear that one word, that abundance, and I think it is an invitation to think about the abundance of God's blessings in our lives. And are we focusing on the abundance that He has given us, or are we focusing on what is potentially a glass half full or something that is missing? And then, of course, Jesus goes on to talk about the generation that he was walking the earth amidst. And the quote from the prophet Isaiah is as relevant to our generation as it was to his generation, maybe even more so, I don't know. But then this final phrasing, I think, is really, really powerful in the reading. "But blessed are your eyes, for they see what they see, and your ears, for they hear what they hear." And I would add to that, "And your tongue for it tastes what it tastes," because when Jesus talks about the idea that many prophets and righteous men long to experience the Messiah, long to hear the Messiah, long to know the Messiah, they were in this waiting, right? These prophets that came hundreds of years or thousands of years before Jesus, they were in this waiting, this long waiting for the Messiah. And they did yearn. They longed to see what the people of Jesus' time were seeing and to hear what the people of Jesus' time were hearing. And even more so now for us because we get to receive the Eucharist. And so to hear what we get to hear, to see what we get to see, to experience what we get to experience in the liturgy, in the church, through tradition, and of course the Eucharist. It's incredibly powerful. And so I think it's a very, very powerful meditation to just sit and reflect on all the people throughout history who lived and died before Jesus was born and how they longed for the Messiah, and what would they think about your ability and my ability to go to church on any day and receive Jesus body, blood, soul, and divinity in the Eucharist? Like their minds would be blown, right? And I think it's important for us to have that perspective because it renews even again and gives us another angle, another way to look at the incredible gifts our faith bestows upon us each and every day. Have a great day and remember, Be Bold, Be Catholic.