Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Homily (July 26, 2026): The Treasure Worth Everything
Readings and Virtual Homily for July 26, 2026, Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time; Relief in Venezuela; Summer in the Parish; Anniversary Party
Readings for Mass this Sunday:
1 Kings 3:5
Psalm 119:57, 72, 76-77, 127-30
Romans 8:28-30
Matthew 12:44-52
Dear Friends and Family,
As with last week's Gospel passage, there is an option this week, longer or shorter version. As with last week's passage, if you hear the longer version at Mass this weekend you will hear a couple more parables (analogies might be the batter term) about the Kingdom than if you hear the shorter version.
I am going with the shorter option here because I want to focus on the two parables it contains. Jesus compares the Kingdom to a treasure in a field and to a pearl of great price. The person who discovers either goes off and "sells all that he has" in order to purchase the field or the pearl; the person is willing to give up everything in order to have the Kingdom (vss. 44-46).
As with last week's Gospel, there is a real resonance in this week's passage with my own experience. I discovered the treasure; I found the pearl, and it changed my life utterly. And I feel that I made this great discovery twice, or maybe I should say, I made it in two phases. As Jesus uses two analogies, the treasure in the field and the pearl, I will employ them here, in reflecting on my own experience.
I feel that I found the treasure in the field at 28, when I returned to the practice of the faith after almost nine years away. I can't say that, at 28, I went out and sold all I had, to possess the Kingdom. My material possessions at that time consisted of my clothes, some unknown number of books, an electric typewriter and a beloved, six-year old caramel-colored Camaro -- 305, V-8, a dreamy muscle car that could take anything but a Corvette, going over the Grapevine.
I didn't sell anything, to possess the Kingdom, but I re-ordered things, I re-calibrated my priorities, I changed the way I lived. I was no longer worshipping at the altar of literary success, and New York and London (though, as the world capitals of English-language publishing, still central to my overall career aims) were no longer what I had often (only semi-jokingly) referred to as my holy cities.
There was a new center of gravity in my life, that autumn of my twenty-eighth year. That center of gravity no longer had anything to do with agents and editors and publicists, with success in Manhattan. The center of gravity found its locus at the altar of the nearest Catholic church. From sometimes going one year to the next without attending Mass, I was suddenly there several times a week. In addition to Sunday Mass, more often than not in Marysville, where I tended in those days to spend my weekends, I would go to St. Mary Magdalen on Berkeley's North Side, for the 530 weekday Mass, after getting off work at my office at Cal. It was a graceful (literally, a grace-full) way to transition from the workday to evenings with my family in Oakland.
Confession became my favorite Sacrament -- I went once or twice a month. I am reminded of what G. K. Chesterton said, regarding his conversion to Rome: "I wanted to get my sins forgiven." After nine years adrift, I felt exactly the same way.
I began to make retreats with the men of the Marysville parish -- usually at Christ the King Retreat Center in Citrus Heights. My reading, which had always been voluminous (after all, I was determined to succeed as a writer) suddenly expanded to include such authors as C. S. Lewis, Dorothy Sayers, Peter Kreeft and of course, Chesterton, whose works were being re-printed in handsome new volumes from Ignatius Press. The treasure I had discovered "in the field" was partly intellectual -- I was as much drawn to Catholic philosophy, to the history of the Church, to the lives of the saints, as I was to straight-up theology.
Above all, of course, there was the simple but vast expansion of my horizon that came with the proper ordering of my fierce literary ambitions. These ambitions were by no means bad in and of themselves. But placed at the precise center of my life, as they had been, for most the decade of my twenties, an idolatrous place, they had brought me to grief, as any pursuit of an idol is bound sooner or later to do.
Freed of the sense that I was nothing if I was not a success as a writer, I began to experience my life itself in a new and, as I say, vastly expanded way. I was so much more than just a writer. I was a disciple. Writing was one of the ways through which my discipleship could be developed and expressed, but it was not the be-all, end-all of my existence. It was a talent entrusted to me. My life as a disciple transcended it. I could not have expressed it as such at the time, but what I was experiencing in those first years back at Mass, back at the Sacraments, back at the praying of the Rosary, back at the life of discipleship, was nothing less than "the glorious freedom of the children of God" (Romans 8:21).
Almost eight years later, the summer that I was 36, I found the pearl, so to speak: I was invited by Fr. Cedric Pisegna of the Passionists at Christ the King to consider becoming a priest.
This time, if it would have made any difference, I really would have gone off and sold everything. I still had nothing to sell, you understand, and even my stalwart Camaro at that point (still running smoothly and well) was fourteen years old. I suppose the proof that I would have sold everything I didn't have is that I was accepted as a candidate by a religious order (the Oblates of the Blessed Virgin Mary, headquartered in this country in Boston) and might well have gone with them but for circumstances in my life which exemplified...
The exact opposite of having anything to sell. I was in debt. By the time the Oblates invited me to join them I was 38; my Camaro was gone, replaced by a sleek and sparkling turquoise Grand Am -- on which I owed that spring maybe fifteen grand. Helping my sister Liz and bro-in-law Hector with the raising of my three Oakland nieces (as I had been doing for most of the past decade) I had credit card debt as well. It was not massive, but it kept me in place in the East Bay at a time when I might otherwise have gone to Boston. Had I been free to do so, I might really have thrown it all over and gone to the Oblates.
I was not free to do so. I remember lunch at a Japanese restaurant on Berkeley's North Side with a close friend from my office at Cal. This friend, not particularly religious herself, was all the same a great supporter of my decision to become a priest. Explaining to her that I could not go to Boston, given my immediate circumstances, my friend laughed, and recommended that I trust those circumstances as an indication of God's will. "Don't worry how your discernment is going to play out," she advised. "You've got your debts to fall back on. Let them be your guide."
The evidence of my determination to "sell all that I had" to possess the Kingdom, however, may be seen in my decision to enroll in the philosophy program with the Dominicans at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. Taking classes with the Dominicans while continuing to work my job at Cal empowered me to move forward on the "purchase of the pearl" at a time when it would otherwise not have been possible.
Only one semester in with my studies at the Dominican School, I accepted the position as youth minister in Marysville. I took the position above all because I sensed that Jesus himself was behind the request. But among other things, the fact that it was a paying job moved me forward in my determination to "buy the pearl." For the next three years I worked my job at Cal, worked the youth ministry position in Marysville, coordinated (and taught one of the three sections in the program) the Confirmation program in Marysville, ran the Vocations Committee in the Marysville parish, worked on my latest novels while hoping my latest agent would get one or two of the ones she was showing sold, and -- oh yeah -- took three or four classes a semester in a demanding masters program in philosophy with the Dominicans at the GTU.
These days, I get tired just describing it. But that is how my life was at the end of my thirties. And I remember absolutely loving my life, during those years. I had found the pearl of great price -- priesthood -- and I was willing to do whatever I had to do, to attain it.
Venezuela. The search for lost loved ones continues for many. My young guys and their families, as previously reported, all came through safely. The family that was rendered temporarily homeless by structural concerns with their apartment block have been told they will be able to move back home September 1. Meanwhile -- thanks to your contributions -- they have found a one-month furnished rental (I think it is an Air BnB) and will be moving in August 1. One of the three guys who was temporarily idled, in terms of his job because of repair work at the restaurant, has gone back to work. The other two are hopeful of being back to work sometime in August and meantime, again, thanks to you, they and their families are fine. Taken care of. $100 American spends like two or three thousand in Caracas, these days. It is crazy. But it does make it fairly easy for us to help friends in Venezuela. Truly, a little goes a LONG way.
Fr. Jesus, pastor here, has been on pilgrimage in Central Europe the last two weeks. I have had a corresponding increase in parish responsibilities as a result. And as if I needed it, I am reminded this summer of just how much I love parish ministry, the extent to which it feeds me as a priest. My commitment to the high school is rock solid. I ain't goin' nowhere anytime soon. But I sure do love the simple, basic, direct joys of parish ministry. As I have said many times before, parish ministry is not work. It is life. A priest's life.
Which sets up a neat segue to this Sunday's celebration here in the parish of my twentieth anniversary. St. Clement has sustained me in my long service at the high school; the parish has provided enthusiasm, encouragement, support and joy. The parish, to some real extent, told me, even as I plunged in at O'Dowd filled with doubt, "We believe in you; you can do this."
For that, and for a lot more, this parish has my untold gratitude and love -- untold because it runs too deep for adequate expression. I think Sunday is going to be one bright and joyful day. I am grateful that, finding the pearl, I was able to find a way, as well, to pay its price.
Take good care. God bless.
Love,
Fr. Brawn