The parables in today’s gospel are easy to understand, so rather than begin by commenting on them, I’d prefer to begin with the very concept of “the kingdom of heaven” which these parables are meant to illustrate. 

First of all, “the kingdom of heaven” does not refer to a so-called heavenly afterlife. Matthew’s Gospel uses “kingdom of heaven” where the other gospels say “kingdom of God.” The good news that Jesus brings is not about a heavenly after-life. His good news is that God is the merciful and compassionate Father present and active in our lives. Jesus is telling us that God desires to be with us here and now. God welcomes us as we are and wants to make us better.

The parables we have recalled over the last several weeks all illustrate, in some way, how to respond to God’s presence and action in our lives. Today’s first two parables tell us to be ready so that nothing gets in the way of welcoming God’s saving presence. They tell us to let God make us better by bringing God’s values into our daily life.

I’d like to approach that saving presence of God by going back to today’s first reading, where we heard King Solomon ask for an understanding heart to judge correctly by distinguishing right from wrong. He asked not for a long life or for riches and power, but for the gift of discerning between right and wrong. 

This gift of discernment is something we truly need in our contemporary life. We need the gift to distinguish between real and fake news, the ability to see through the clever advertising we meet on social media. We have heard about people being deceived by promises of making big money fast. Any offer to make big money quickly is automatically suspicious. But we hear about examples of young people here in Japan being deceived, not noticing how they were manipulated into becoming victims of crime rings who managed to get hold of their personal data and then forced them into situations of large-scale robbery and even murder. We all need to take as a model King Solomon’s prayer asking for the wisdom to distinguish between right and wrong, rather than asking for wealth or power.

The gospel parable showed us a man finding a buried treasure. In our world today there are a number of important issues that we cannot allow our governments to bury away so that they will be “out of sight, out of mind.” We need the gift of discernment to keep digging up these issues and put them in proper perspective.

The first issue that comes to mind is climate change. We all bemoan the extraordinary climate quirks we are experiencing—abnormally high temperatures, flash floods, and uncontrollable wildfires. But the panic we feel about these phenomena tends to get buried beneath the enormous financial profit that comes from investing in coal, oil, and other fossil fuels, despite their carbon emissions and planet-warming effects. And that is only compounded now by the enormous need for electricity and water to run A.I. data processing plants. 

Also, the trend toward supplying energy from nuclear power plants continues, while our experience of the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters gets buried away from our consciousness. We need to dig up and face serious issues like climate change and the search for clean energy.

Those are only two examples of buried issues. Another one is the way we pollute our rivers and oceans with plastic waste, while continuing to produce more and more plastic bottles, garbage bags, and food wrappers. Many of these eventually get dumped into the ocean and end up in the stomachs of sea creatures. 

Another issue that governments do not face squarely is the great disparity between the wealthy and the needy. We may brag about our GDP—but the rich grow richer, and billions are spent on waging expensive wars and stockpiling weapons of war, while funds are cut off from sustaining programs that are needed to help the great majority of people in the world who do not have sufficient access to food, medical care, education, and other elements of the common good that God desires for the peace and happiness of us all. Like Solomon, we should ask for the wisdom to judge between right and wrong. We should ask for the courage to face serious issues and not sweep them away from our notice and let them get buried beneath the more immediate urge to increase wealth and power and prestige. 

We must continue to dig up and expose these needs to ensure God’s kingdom here on earth, God’s reign of justice and peace. We need to work together, as individuals and as the various nations we belong to, to bring about the type of society that God desires for us, where conflicts are resolved without resorting to violence and war, where the wealthy help provide for bettering the poor, where we work together to face head-on the climate issues that affect us all and take the means toward finding a solution so that future generations will not suffer from what we have broken but have failed to repair by our ignorance and negligence.

May God give us the gift of distinguishing what is more important now in order to keep from further damaging the climate, the oceans, and other goods of the earth that belong to all the people living on the earth that God has given us, our shared home. Amen.

July 25 (5:30 pm) and 26 (12 noon) 2026
Robert Chiesa SJ