What Life Is All About - Bishop Barron's Sunday Sermon

0:00 Peace be with you, friends. We come to the 17th Sunday of Ordinary Time, and we're going to finish our reading of the 13th chapter of Matthew's Gospel, that great chapter dealing with the parables. And gosh, the ones we hear today are so fine. As I mentioned last week, there's a tendency to write the parables off as nice little stories with a moral, and they're kind of charming. No, no, the parables are cutting to the heart of the matter in many ways. It's Jesus' kind of preferred way of conveying the truths of the kingdom. And these are really good examples. The ones today are all about the summum bonum, the highest good. And therefore, they're about what's most fundamental in the spiritual life. You could argue the entire Bible is about this theme. I've said the master theme of the Bible is right worship. And see, that's the same thing. You worship, worthship, what you think is of highest good, highest value, the sumum bonum. So what is that, and how do you get your lives ordered to it, makes all the difference, right? That's what these are about. So the first one, Jesus said, the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field, which a person finds and hides again, and out of joy goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

1:25 It's a cool image. We're not going to get it right away, but in the ancient world, before insurance companies and all that, when people left for whatever reason, maybe there was an enemy army coming or whatever, they would bury sometimes their valuables in the field, hoping that eventually they'd come back and they'd be able to recover them. Well, then, who knows? They were killed or they were distracted. They never came back. And that treasure remained buried in the field until maybe many, many years later, as a farmer comes along plowing and comes across the treasure. That's the image here. So something you come upon that suddenly you realize this is of enormous value, in fact, such great value, I'm going to sell everything I've got to buy that field. Or, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant searching for fine pearls. When he finds a pearl of great praise, he goes and sells all that he has and buys it.

2:24 See, everybody, this is life. This is what it's about. Do you muster the capacity in your life to say, Now that I've found the sumum bonum, the highest good, the pearl, the treasure, I'm willing to sacrifice or relativize or set aside everything else. If I don't do that, and I will come at the end of this story, we'll come to what happens. This is the whole drama of the spiritual life. Can you muster the capacity to order your life properly to the sumum bonum? Okay, you say, I get that, I get that, but what is it? How do I find it? What is the treasure? What is the pearl of great price? Well, let me rely here on both Pascal, the great French mathematician, scientist, and philosopher, and Kierkegaard, the great 19th century mysterious philosophical thinker.

3:26 They both say something similar, really, about three stages of life or three stages of value. Call them the goods of the body, the goods of the mind, and then the goods of the heart. What are the goods of the body? Well, all those values associated with sensual pleasure. So food and drink and sex and other forms of sensual delight. Are those good things? Yes. I've said a million times, Catholics aren't Puritans. We like the body. We like the goods of the body. We're in favor of food and drink and sex and sensual pleasure. They're all good things. Whatever God makes is good. The ensemble, very good. So we like all these things. They're goods. But listen, everybody. They're not the summum bonum. They're not the highest good.

4:24 Now, I mean, Plato understood this. This is a very ancient perception. Why aren't they the sumum bonum? If you're a hedonist, right, you think they are the sumum bonum. That's what life's all about. Eat, drink, and be merry. That's what life's all about, getting as much pleasure as you can. But what if sages across the ages realized, well, how ephemeral, how fleeting these goods are. I'm going to give you an example. When I was in Santa Barbara, I was there for six years, loved it, lived in a beautiful, that beautiful city. And one thing I loved to do is there were mountains right near my house, and I could just walk a little bit and enter a mountain trail. And there was this good, challenging walk kind of up the mountain. I'd get to the top after this good exercise. I could see Santa Barbara. I could see the Pacific Ocean. I'd walk down this beautiful hill, and I'd get back home.

5:17 I get a tall glass of ice water, and I would sit down in my comfortable chair on the back porch, and my back porch looked up at the mountains. And I'd sit down, and after that good exercise and the endorphins had been released, right, and then I'm sipping the water. And at that moment, looking up at the mountains, surrounded by beautiful things, I think, this is bliss, you know, this is just it. I love it. I love it. Then, a few minutes later, the water's gone. And, okay, that was great. And I'm, you know, waiting for my next thing. What else am I going to do? Like all sensual pleasure, it came and it went. Great. And then it passes. Think of every meal you've ever eaten. The best meal you've ever eaten. The best one.

6:08 surrounded by friends, nice cigar afterwards. And then the meal's over and, okay, feel kind of stuffed. My clothes smell like cigars. Maybe I'm leaving a little bit sick for that dinner. You know, sensual pleasure, it happens and then it's over. I've told you before about my addiction to popcorn. Just today, before I came over here, I had lunch. I had a very simple lunch, soup and a little bit of chicken and cheese. I was still a little bit hungry, and so I got this bowl of popcorn. And when I'm eating popcorn, the first couple bites, it's like, I'm in heaven. I love it. I just love it. But then, of course, I ate the whole bowl of popcorn. And afterwards, the kernel's stuck in your teeth, and your mouth's kind of greasy, and you got popcorn on you. That's bodily pleasures are like that.

7:02 They come and they go. Wise people realize they're not the sumum bonum. They're not the treasure. They're not the pearl of great praise. They're good, but they're not summum bonum. Okay, from the goods of the body to the goods of the mind. Now, this is interesting. As you mature and you get a broader experience of things, you realize there are certain goods that are accessed through the mind that are more substantial, less evanescent than the mere goods of the body. Think now of someone, mathematics and science and literature and philosophy, these goods of the mind that give you access to deep and abiding truths about the world. You have, and Plato saw this, you have stepped out of the ordinary world of sense experience, the goods of the body, to a higher plane. The great story here is Alexander the Great and Diogenes, the philosopher. So the story, if it's not true, it should be, right? That Diogenes is there on a sunny day, and he's drawing figures in the ground. He's doing mathematical calculations, and Alexander the Great had just conquered his town, and he'd heard about this great sage. So Alexander comes, and he stands next to Diogenes, who's on the ground, and he says, you know, I am Alexander. I've just conquered your city. What can I do for you? And the philosopher responded, you can get out of my light. He was blocking the light for these things on the ground.

8:33 What does that show you? That he was saying, look, man, I know you can try and give me any sensual pleasure I want. I mean, you're the great Alexander, but I don't want those things. I'm not interested in those things. I moved to a higher plane, right? Or one of my favorite stories is of Thomas Aquinas, my hero, is that he and his brother Dominicans were coming back from a journey and they were approaching the city of Paris, which was seen in the Middle Ages as it is today, one of the great cities in Europe. And they came to this ridge, and they suddenly saw the city in all its splendor. One of the brothers said, oh, what wouldn't you give for that city? And Aquinas said, I'd give the whole thing if I could just get that Chrysostom commentary on Matthew. As we're reading Matthew's gospel here. Well, what that tells you is Thomas Aquinas, I mean, he wasn't beguiled by the sensual pleasures that could come from, you know, ruling the city of Paris. He wanted Chrysostom's commentary.

9:28 He had moved from the mere goods of the body to the goods of the mind. Okay. Have we found the summa bonum? Not yet. Not yet. I mean, look, even those goods of the mind, philosophy, science, mathematics, they give us access to certain truths, but we know this. You answer one question, you got 10 more. Answer those, you got 100 more. Whatever truth you come to by means of these sciences, well, it's not the totality of truth that the mind is looking for. Lonergan said that, right? The mind wants to know everything about everything. It's not satisfied by particular truths. So the goods of the mind, they're good, very good, but they're not the sumum bonum. What's the sumum bonum? What Pascal would call the goods of the heart. what Kierkegaard would call the properly religious dimension of life. When the soul, the heart, is opened up to God and to the things of God, what have we found?

10:32 In God alone, we found the highest good. Not something as evanescent as the goods of the world, eating popcorn, relaxing after a great hike, or savoring a great meal or whatever it is. Greater even than whatever philosophy and science and math can give us. God being itself, the source of existence, God, the infinite God.

11:01 Now we found the summa bonum, the highest good. Listen now. In relation to whom all the other goods find their place. See, we don't have to play the game of, I found God, therefore I'm rejecting everything else. No, no.

11:22 Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and the rest will be given unto you. Now, with your loves properly ordered, you can see the relationship between bodily goods, intellectual goods, and the sumum bonum. But see, the point is, everybody, once you've found the pearl of great price, don't mess around with simulacra. Once you've found the treasure, sell everything else, meaning don't treat anything else as the sumum bonum. Lord, the God of Israel is a jealous God. That's what it means. Not that God's falling into a jealous snitch. He doesn't have emotions the way we do. It means there's no competition here. You can't have two highest goods. When you find the sumum bonum, relativize everything else in your life and order it there. You know, a very good example of this to me is the great Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England, a man who loved the good things of the body.

12:30 He had this manor house, and he ate fine meals, and he was acquainted with the most exalted spirits in Europe, and he knew the goods of the body and of the mind. Of course he did. But when he was brought to the scaffold because he had opposed Henry VIII, what did he say? I die the king's good servant. Yeah, he was. All his life, he was the king's good servant. He served the political ends of England. Yeah, he believed in that. He was the king's good servant. But God's first. Right. That's how it works. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and the rest will be given unto you. What's the central tragedy of life? And I make bold to say this without fear of contradiction. The central tragedy of human life, as Augustine put it, is mistaking a creature for the creator. When I take anything creaturely, a good of the body or the mind, anything creaturely, and I make that my sumum bonum.

13:32 All the trouble in life that we experience spiritually and psychologically, everybody, follows from that fatal move. Seek ye first the kingdom of God. When you find the treasure, relativize everything else. When you find the pearl, buy it. Relativize everything else. To get that right is to live as a citizen of the kingdom.