Family: Homily for Wednesday, July 29, 2026

Family. Where is the desire of our heart? The kingdom of heaven should be the desire of our heart. And it should be the desire of our heart in a way that is so strong that we would do anything to enter into it. We would seek out a treasure buried in a field. We will buy a pearl of great price. Readings for Today.

Family

There’s nothing like family. One of the definitions I’ve heard about home is that it’s the place where they have to take you. But so much of our life is wrapped up in our family. So much of our early experiences were about family.

And today we celebrate a rather unusual family. Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. We don’t know much about them really, except the few glimpses we get in the scriptures. We know that Martha is very type A, always moving about, being busy, setting up, being the person of hospitality, and then really complaining that not everybody else is concerned with hospitality in the same way.

We know there’s Mary. Mary who is gentle, listening, reflective. And then there’s Lazarus. And with the exception of Lazarus being raised from the dead, we really don’t know much else about him. But we know that these three, Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, were good friends to Jesus. And we know from the fact that Jesus went out to comfort them when Lazarus died, that these were very special people to Jesus. And we can, I think, rightly conclude that they were special people because of the desire in their heart.

And that’s what the gospel is really talking about. Where is the desire of our heart? The kingdom of heaven should be the desire of our heart. And it should be the desire of our heart in a way that is so strong that we would do anything to enter into it. We would seek out a treasure buried in a field. We will buy a pearl of great price.

We will, in fact, reorganize our lives so that the kingdom of heaven becomes central in what we do. We make decisions through the glasses, so to speak, of the kingdom of heaven. We live in a certain way because we want to be citizens of this kingdom of heaven.

It means that what we do here at Mass should permeate every other aspect of our lives. We listen as God speaks to us. We are fed by God himself. And we are called to recognize that every other human being is an invitation to meet Jesus. The challenge, of course, is that this is not as easy as I make it sound.

Sometimes we want to focus on the things that we can control, whereas faith is about surrender. Sometimes we don’t like other people, and so we close off the invitation to meet Jesus. Sometimes we don’t pay attention to God’s word. And sometimes we don’t allow the Lord to fill our hunger, we seek to fill it ourselves.

Jeremiah is a great example of someone who saw his whole life. Through the lens of his relationship with God. He devours the words of God. And because of the words of God, Jeremiah is able to speak them to the people. And even though these words of God are not terribly fruit-bearing in a way, because most people don’t listen to him, he never loses this focus. Let us ask the Lord that we too might always focus on the Lord Jesus.

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