Thursday in the Sixteenth Week of Ordinary Time, July 21, 2022

Matthew 13, 10-17

The disciples approached Jesus and said, “Why do you speak to the crowd in parables?” He said to them in reply, “Because knowledge of the mysteries of the Kingdom of heaven has been granted to you, but to them it has not been granted. To anyone who has, more will be given and he will grow rich; from anyone who has not, even what he has will be taken away. This is why I speak to them in parables, because they look but do not see and hear but do not listen or understand. Isaiah’s prophecy is fulfilled in them, which says: “You shall indeed hear but not understand, you shall indeed look but never see. Gross is the heart of this people, they will hardly hear with their ears, they have closed their eyes, lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their hearts and be converted and I heal them.”  But blessed are your eyes, because they see, and your ears, because they hear. Amen, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.”

“Why do you speak to the crowd in parables?”  The Apostles ask an interesting question.  Why shouldn’t the Lord speak to them in parables?  They ask as though they think there is a better way to speak to them.  And there is, if the speaker is merely trying to drum up support for a march on Jerusalem — and at this point the Apostles still think that Jesus is the military Messiah that the Pharisees taught the Jews to await.  But parables cause people to think more deeply about a matter than if it were simply stated to them.  Parables present a challenge to the usual way we think.  The use of parables for teaching on moral or religious matters offers more than learning; it offers conversion.  The conversion may take time.  Parables are not solved easily and quickly.  It may take years to understand their meaning.  To tell a parable is to cast a seed unto the soil.

“Because knowledge of the mysteries of the Kingdom of heaven has been granted to you, but to them it has not been granted.”  The Lord Jesus affirms that he teaches his Apostles in a different way, and he can do this because, unlike the crowds, they see and hear him every day.  And the deeper learning they receive through this experience will enable them to reveal “the mysteries of the Kingdom of heaven” after he sends the Holy Spirit upon them at Pentecost.  

“To anyone who has, more will be given and he will grow rich; from anyone who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”  The Lord speaks of faith here: the one who has faith and perseveres in it will receive greater faith, but the one who has little faith will lose even that over time.  It is up to us to live our faith so that it may grow, and to pray for this: “I do believe! Help my unbelief” (Mark 9, 24).

“This is why I speak to them in parables, because they look but do not see and hear but do not listen or understand.”  If the intent is to make people see and hear what is being told them, it might seem a bad idea to make the understanding even more difficult through parables. But by involving them in the message by presenting it to them in parable form, they will take it to heart when they understand.  It is the same principle in telling stories with morals to small children.

“You shall indeed hear but not understand, etc.”  The Lord Jesus quotes from Isaiah 6, 9-10.  This is the commission given to the Prophet Isaiah after he sees the vision of God in the Temple and after his lips are cleansed with a fiery coal: “Go, and say to this people, You shall indeed hear but not understand, etc.”  That is, You have made yourselves deaf, blind, and without understanding through your repeated sinning.  “Lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their hearts and be converted and I heal them.”  That is, the people would rather to continue in sin than to be healed — taught — by the Lord.  The Lord’s use of this particular verse, coming as it does at the very beginning of Isaiah’s work as a Prophet, would draw the Apostles into comparing the Lord with the Isaiah.  They would have noted that for all his greatness and the beauty of his prophecies, Isaiah performed no great feats of healing and exorcism, nor did he preach as this man preached.  Indeed, the Lord Jesus often pointed out that he was fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecies.

“But blessed are your eyes, because they see, and your ears, because they hear. Amen, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.”  Blessed are your minds, because they have received the teaching of the Gospel.  This is a lovely verse in which the Lord calls us to think back over the long centuries in which people dreamed of a Savior coming to redeem them.  This brings to mind Moses, whom God took to look over the Land flowing with milk and honey which he would not be allowed to enter due to his sin.  He looked, and he yearned, and then he died.  The Lord, the Promised One of all the ages, has now come to earth and the Apostles saw him with their own eyes, heard him with their own ears, and touched him with their hands (cf. 1 John 1).  

The Lord declared that the eyes and ears of the Apostles were blessed.  They were blessed so that the Apostles might proclaim to the world him whom they saw and heard and touched.  We see and hear him in our hearts when we pray, especially when we pray before the Blessed Sacrament.  We do this for our own good, and for the good of others.