Praise be Jesus and Mary.
This weekend's readings talked to us about the mysteries of the kingdom.
The gospel antiphon says, blessed are you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth.
You have revealed to little ones the mysteries of the kingdom.
And then our Lord in today's gospel says, for although you have hidden these things
from the wise and the learned, you have revealed them to little ones.
So what are these things?
What are the mysteries of the kingdom?
We should all hope to be among these little ones to whom these mysteries have been revealed,
right?
That we understand the mysteries of the kingdom.
So I want to point out three of these mysteries of the kingdom that are contained in this
Sunday's reading.
The first is that the king of this kingdom is also God.
That's what we sing in today's response, Soriel Psalm.
I will praise your name forever, my king and my God.
And so our king is also our God and our God is our king.
This is in reference to the incarnation, okay?
True God and true man is Christ the king.
This is what is foretold in today's first reading from the prophet Zechariah when he
says your king shall come to you.
And this gets to the second mystery that is that this kingdom is universal.
Thus says the Lord, rejoice heartily, O daughter Zion, shout for joy, O daughter Jerusalem.
See your king shall come to you.
So this is going to be first for the Jews and then later for the Gentiles, right?
Jesus Christ is first of all, the king of the Jews.
So that's why the prophet is telling daughter Zion and daughter Jerusalem to rejoice and
shout for joy because this is truly their king.
But not only their king, because the prophet goes on to say his dominion shall be from
sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth.
So that is, it is going to include the Gentiles as well.
So this is the second mystery of the kingdom contained in today's readings.
The fact that this kingdom is universal.
Now the third mystery I want to talk about is that there are going to be paradoxes present
in this kingdom, okay?
Peace is going to coexist with war and rest is going to coexist with labor, with a yoke.
That's what the readings tell us, right?
The prophet, he says, he shall proclaim peace to the nations, right?
Our Lord says, peace I leave with you.
My peace I give to you.
Not as the world gives, do I give to you.
So the peace that is promised by Christ, as I mentioned, it does not exclude war.
And that's what today's second reading tells us about.
This is where St. Paul, he's writing to the Romans and he says, if by the spirit you put
to death the deeds of the body, right?
So we're talking about spiritual warfare.
We're talking about putting to death the deeds of the body.
So this putting to death, that's not about peace, right?
In fact, another translation, the Douay-Rheims actually has mortify the deeds of the body,
which literally means put to death.
So it was translated in a more literal way in the lectionary.
So this is what St. Paul is getting at.
You are not in the flesh.
On the contrary, you are in the spirit.
If only the spirit of God dwells in you, whoever does not have the spirit of Christ does not
belong to him.
So we're talking about the spirit of God, the spirit of Christ dwelling in the soul.
This is the soul that's in the state of grace.
And whoever is not in the state of grace does not have the spirit of God, does not have
the spirit of Christ dwelling in their soul.
And that means they are still in the flesh that is living according to the flesh.
The dictates of the flesh, the passions of the flesh, and not the dictates of the spirit
of the spirit of Christ, of the spirit of God.
And so in order to live according to the spirit, we need to put to death the deeds of the body.
We need to mortify the flesh and mortify the body.
And how do we go about doing that?
Well, we have the example in the lives of all of the saints, fasting, sacrifice, being
diligent in our duties, everything that requires a certain discipline with regard to the body.
Sometimes it means just getting up to go to mass on Sunday.
Sometimes that's a mortification.
That feels like death when you have to get out of bed.
But if the spirit of Christ and the spirit of God dwells in us, we will want to do these
things out of love for God and out of love for neighbor and out of a well-ordered love
for ourselves.
And so this is the paradox, right?
We can experience the peace of Christ, but there is going to be this interior war going
on at the same time.
The peace that the world gives that is superficial and ephemeral.
It comes and it goes rather quickly and it doesn't satisfy.
Whereas the peace of Christ can actually be present even when there's a disturbance, right?
From our passions.
We can still experience the peace of Christ because it's in the depths of our souls and
does not depend on external factors.
I've used this as an example before.
I think the last time I was here with the MIM, St. Maximilian Kolbe, right, how when
he showed up at Auschwitz, the death camp, he experienced great peace within his soul,
right?
That is the spirit of God, the spirit of Christ that dwells within the souls of the saints
who have put to death the deeds of the flesh.
So that's what we want to strive for.
That's what we want to aim for.
That's a mystery, right?
It's a real mystery of the kingdom that is revealed to little ones.
Now our Lord in today's gospel talks about another paradox, right?
He says, come to me all you who labor and are burdened and I will give you rest.
And there's probably not a soul on the face of the earth who doesn't feel labor and burden,
right?
Those who have all material needs met, right?
Because they still feel unsatisfied.
They still feel the weight of the world, like something is wrong and not in place.
And so Christ invites everyone to come to him and you will find rest.
But then he says, take my yoke upon you and learn from me.
But wait a second.
You were just talking about rest and now you're talking about a yoke.
A yoke is burdensome.
A yoke implies work and effort.
What's going on here?
This is a paradox, right?
The mystery of the kingdom.
And it is perfectly in line with what we just talked about, about peace while at the same
time war.
And so in the spiritual life, we will find rest in the sacred heart of Jesus, but we
need to, at the same time, bear the yoke.
Now our Lord promises my yoke is easy and my burden light.
So it is a yoke, that's for sure.
We have to do our part.
We have to make our effort.
But our Lord promises us by his presence, by the accompanying help of his grace, that
this yoke will seem easy and light.
So this is the dynamic that's going on in the interior life, this dynamic between the
ascetical life and the mystical life, the life of mortification and the life of grace.
These are the mysteries of the kingdom that have been revealed to us just in this Sunday's
readings, right?
Now I want to conclude with, again, some words from St. Paul.
This is Philippians chapter four, verse nine.
He says, what you have learned and received, do, and the God of peace will be with you.
That's very important, right?
If we're among the little ones to whom the mysteries of the kingdom have been revealed,
we have learned them.
We have received them.
Let's now do them, right?
And if we do that, the God of peace will be with us.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.