The mystery of the kingdom of God has been granted to you, but to those outside, everything
comes in parables, so that they may look and see, but not perceive, and hear and listen,
but not understand, in order that they may not be converted and be forgiven.
One could easily interpret this passage from our Lord's words as meaning he told things
in parables so that people wouldn't be saved, but that of course would be an incorrect understanding.
But there is some sense in which our Lord buries the truth within the parable so that
it isn't quite as...
easy to get to as one might like.
And then there's the other aspect of what our Lord is saying where he seems to set the
apostles in one group and everybody else in another.
He says, the mystery of the kingdom of God has been granted to you, but to those outside,
everything comes in parables.
So we have to sort of dig into this and figure out what our Lord is saying because we know
that our Lord wants all men to be saved.
And that we are all...
more or less in the same boat, we are all sinful and we need to be saved, we all need
to be enlightened and our Lord wants to enlighten us.
I think you could say the apostles were those who were eager to know the word of God and
had humbled themselves.
And they were in our Lord's inner circle.
And in a sense our Lord wants us all to be within that inner circle, but we have to open
our hearts.
And if we humble ourselves and open our hearts, then we are...
um...
we are granted the key to the mysteries of the kingdom.
But the fundamental attitude must be that of humility.
And that's really what is required by the parable.
There is truth there within the parable.
And yet unless we are willing to dig, unless we are willing to ask questions, unless we
are willing to recognize that we are...
not as wise as we think we are, that we need to be enlightened by someone else, that even
when the truth comes to us, it's still mysterious and we can't just immediately grab a hold
of it and comprehend it.
Unless we have that kind of disposition, then the mysteries are closed to us.
And this is what our Lord is doing with all those who hear him preach.
There is another sense, of course, in which scripture scholars will tell us that our Lord
spoke in parables.
Because parables are great illustrations of the points that he's trying to make.
And that the storyteller, the preacher who is also a storyteller, is very effective in
getting his point across.
And that's also true.
Once we understand the key to the parable, then it becomes readily apparent what our
Lord is saying.
And we understand the meaning of the story, and the story is very helpful for our understanding.
And yet...
um...
when we have an attitude of humility and openness to the truth, and an understanding
that we need to be enlightened, there is no way of making progress.
Today we celebrate the feast day of St. Thomas Aquinas, the great doctor of the church, the
common doctor, as he is called, because his writings, in particular the Summa Theologiae,
is so profoundly important for...
for the...
for the...
for the...
for the catechesis and the enlightenment of those who study theology.
And he was, before all else, a humble man and a saint.
He was well known, of course, for having, in his earlier life, been very quiet and,
in the eyes of most men, he appeared to be sort of a dope.
St. Albert the Great called him the dumb ox, because, uh... I think it was actually some
of his, uh...
classmates that called him the dumb ox, and St. Albert's response was that he might be
a dumb ox, but one day this dumb ox is going to bellow louder than anything you've ever
heard and he will be heard across the four...
to the four corners of the world, uh... which was true.
But he...
he didn't have an inclination to put himself forward.
He didn't have, uh... this sort of arrogant or... or sort of prideful attitude and intellectual
gifts that he had given.
And he... he remained quiet under his master until God inspired him to begin to... to speak.
And when he did begin to speak, people were, yes, very surprised, uh... at how much knowledge
he actually had.
Uh... but he always retained that humility, uh... throughout... throughout his... his
life and, uh... and continued to, uh... seek only the will of God and to understand in
order to live.
That's why towards the end of his life, in a blinding flash...
of... of insight perhaps, a mystical revelation, he realized that all of his work was relatively
small compared to the realities of which he was speaking.
And he ceased to write.
He stopped writing.
He said, all my writing is like... is as straw, means nothing compared to the realities of
which he was writing about.
So he always had that perspective to realize where he stood before God and had the humility
to realize that everything that had been given...
been given him was a gift and that it was the fruit of God's grace.
We live in a time that is very arrogant, especially with regard to the intellectual virtues.
And especially when it comes to matters of morality and religion, we've gotten to the
point where we think we know better than God, that we know better than the wisdom of the
saints and of the holy doctors. And we make things up as we go along and we go down paths
that have been tread often before. There's really nothing new under the sun. There have
been cultures before that have legitimized and praised sodomy, for example, and they
are no longer with us. They didn't persevere, they didn't survive. And you'd think we would
learn from our mistakes, but in our arrogance, we haven't learned from our mistakes.
We have refused to humble ourselves before God.
So in the spirit of St. Thomas, let us all approach the word of God with a spirit of
reverence and humility, recognizing that what God has to tell us is always important and
it's always vested with grace. But we won't really understand anything of any worth unless
we humble ourselves and are willing to recognize it.
That we are in need truly of enlightenment and of being guided into everlasting life.
May St. Thomas Aquinas intercede on our behalf and give us that wisdom by which we know that
we are God's children and he is our Father. He reveals his mind to us and takes care of
us if only we are willing to allow him to lead us.
We must be grounded from within as
one human being.
They do what they say, but we must always pay attention to the Lord.
They are 40 to the part that says that they are full of mercy and light, they hope that
the way they believe will lead them to your true state.
The purposes in��를
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Thank you.