A Homily for the Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Readings: Sirach 15:15-20  1 Corinthians 2:6-10  Matthew 5:17-37

While he served as Lord Chancellor, Thomas More was the second most powerful man in England, behind only King Henry VIII. 

In his play about the martyred saint, “A Man for All Seasons,” Robert Bolt creates a scene that captures both Thomas More and a man who desperately wanted to wield weight like him, Richard Rich. 

Seeking a place at court, the portal to power and privilege, a young Rich befriends More. He then asks the chancellor to advance his cause. 

After illustrating the many temptations that come with power, More tells Rich: “Why not be a teacher? You’d be a fine teacher. Perhaps even a great one.”

A disappointed Rich responds, “And if I was, who would know it?”

“You, your pupils, your friends, God. Not a bad public, that…. Oh, and a quiet life.” The martyr who would die insisting that he was the king’s good servant but God’s first tries to root Richard Rich in the real. 

Living free of illusion is no easy task because of our fallen nature. If God is what is most true, then every decision for what is less than God takes us farther from what is truly real.

We are repeatedly tempted to identify our desires and designs with the truth. Reality just needs to catch up with us, we think to ourselves. But God’s reality constantly calls us beyond ourselves. Perhaps this is why another saint, Catherine of Siena, often spoke of herself as “she who is not” after her Lord appeared to her one day and said:

Do you know, daughter, who you are and who I am? If you know these two things you have beatitude in your grasp. You are she who is not, and I Am He Who Is. Let your soul but become penetrated with this truth, and the enemy can never lead you astray.

Shifting her eyes from herself and onto her Lord, Catherine was convinced that she had found the path to truth. Speaking to those who make even the smallest of choices for the true and the good, she wrote ever so simply, “Your desire is an infinite thing.” St. Paul said something quite similar. Being rooted in the real, not our fantasies, leads us into all truth: “The Spirit scrutinizes everything, even the depths of God” (1 Cor 2:10). 

Our small choices for the true and the good—and let’s throw in the beautiful—might not seem all that significant to us, but because they are rooted in God, directed toward what is most true, the best and the beautiful, they have truly infinite potential.

What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard,
and what has not entered the human heart,
what God has prepared for those who love him, 
this God has revealed to us through the Spirit (1 Cor 2:9-10).

Though they promise a glory yet to come, the Scriptures continually proclaim what might be called “the intensity of the infinite in daily life.” According to the Book of Sirach, while our choices are ever so domestic, their ultimate object is the divine. 

If you choose you can keep the commandments, 
they will save you;
if you trust in God, you too shall live (15:15).

And Jesus will not allow himself to be understood as the one who treats the law as a merely human dispensation, something to be set aside by those who know better.

Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.
I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.
Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away,
not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter
will pass from the law,
until all things have taken place (Mt 5:17-18).

No, Christ preached the intensity of the ordinary. 

But I say to you,
everyone who looks at a woman with lust
has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
If your right eye causes you to sin,
tear it out and throw it away (Mt 5:28-29).

In the person of Christ, God has entered human life, making its smallest parts portals to the divine. 

Thomas More was a truly exceptional man, in any kingdom or time. Richard Rich was not. But can we fault Rich for his desires, his delusions? We so often make the same mistake, thinking that today is trivial—these people, this place, that chore. We think that some never-quite-arriving tomorrow is what really matters. 

In “A Man for All Seasons,” Richard Rich meets Thomas More for the last time when the now former chancellor is on trial for treason, accused of denying the king’s novel title as supreme head of the church. More had been careful not to say this, but Rich perjures himself, testifying that he had heard the prisoner deny the title. 

Before he is condemned on the evidence of this lie, More asks permission to pose a question to Richard Rich.

That’s a chain of office you are wearing. May I see it? The red dragon. What’s this?

Thomas More is told: “Sir Richard is appointed Attorney-General for Wales.”

The soon-to-be martyr replies with a mixture of pain and amusement:

For Wales? Why, Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world…. But for Wales!

If only we could live as though today were all there is. If only we would root ourselves in the real. The choice for life, for truth, for the truth of life that is God, is always made today, in its reality. Today is real. Tomorrow, especially as we twist it, is not.

The Rev. Terrance W. Klein is a priest of the Diocese of Dodge City and author of Vanity Faith.