Pip: What would you ask for if God offered you anything — anything at all? Most of us would probably start with a list. Fr. canicecnjoku, writing from Puerto Rico, went a different direction this week.

Mara: Right — the homilies this Sunday center on wisdom, the Kingdom of God, and what it actually means to ask for the right thing. Let’s start with those reflections.

Pip: The question at the heart of this Sunday’s homily is a genuinely uncomfortable one: if you could ask God for anything, would you ask for something that lasts?

Mara: The first reading sets the frame, and the homily quotes Solomon’s request directly: “Give your servant a heart to understand how to discern between good and evil.”

Pip: That’s not a request for comfort or security — it’s a request for the capacity to navigate life well. The stakes are real: without that discernment, the argument goes, everything else you accumulate is just noise.

Mara: The homily on Romans 8 pushes this further. Paul’s line — “In everything, God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose” — gets unpacked at some length. The word “everything” is treated as load-bearing: it includes, as the text puts it, “your present trouble, your heavy heart, your poverty, your richness, joblessness, your success and failure, your weakness and strength, as well as your sickness and health.”

Pip: So providence isn’t a promise that things go smoothly — it’s a claim that nothing falls outside the frame. That’s a bigger assertion than it first sounds.

Mara: And the Gospel parables of the hidden treasure and the pearl of great price land as the practical conclusion: prefer the Kingdom, ensure nothing blocks entry into it. The Spanish-language homily, “Homilía del Décimo Séptimo Domingo del Tiempo Ordinario, Año A,” covers the same readings and makes the same movement — from Solomon’s wisdom, through Paul’s providence, to the parables — but addresses a Spanish-speaking congregation directly, with its own texture and phrasing.

Pip: Two languages, one argument: wisdom is not a luxury you ask for after everything else is settled.

Mara: The homily closes by bringing it back to petition — ask as Solomon asked, reasonably and not selfishly, so that the Kingdom becomes the actual priority rather than the stated one.

Pip: The question of what we genuinely value — and what we’re willing to ask for — doesn’t stay inside Sunday liturgy for long.

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Mara: Wisdom as the thing worth asking for, and providence as the frame that holds everything else — those are ideas that travel well beyond any single Sunday.

Pip: Next time, we’ll see where the territory leads.