God First!

So the irony, one of the ironies of this gospel here is one of those at table with Jesus.

Okay, so here's Jesus, right? Who is, if you will, the embodiment of the kingdom, all right? Jesus is there with them.

The way, the truth, and the life, the God among men, Emmanuel, God with us, right? And he's missing Jesus asking about when we dine in the kingdom of God and essentially Jesus is the kingdom of God present to him but he can't see it unaware of it okay now could that happen to us okay I mean it could it certainly could and then so he tells the story to this man and you heard the story I don't need to repeat the whole thing but Were these occupations they were engaged in evil? Buying property, evaluating your property, getting married, you know, getting some new oxen to plow your fields.

All legitimate things.

All legitimate occupations, all legitimate ways to spend your time, right? You know, there's this order.

If you ever listen to Father Mark Ropel, you will hear this, okay? He says it every third Sunday, okay? It's God first, family second.

Everything else is third, right? And say, here's the kingdom of God.

They're being invited to the kingdom of God, and they say, no, excuse me.

I have other things to do.

So what is their great sin? Their great sin isn't adultery.

Their great sin isn't murder.

Their great sin isn't stealing.

Their great sin is just to neglect the kingdom of God among them.

To miss the invitation.

To miss the invitation and go their own way.

You know, when I was reading this earlier, and I took a moment to...

Look up some, you know, commentaries from St. Augustine and St. Thomas.

And I mean, they were it was just so stark how challenging one of the things they said, if you if you're if you spend your whole life eating cotton candy, let's say.

And then somebody says, here, have this healthy, wonderful, various fare of food, and you taste that really the best food that could be given you.

You're like, eh, it's not, no, I don't want that.

Because you've accepted something much less as the standard and the good.

And so these things are not bad things, are they? They're good things, but they're not the best thing.

And they've chosen the lesser.

And let me ask if you've ever heard this, she's chosen the better part and it won't be taken from her.

Have you ever heard that? And so they're all choosing the lesser.