Our readings this Sunday ask what actually comes first. Solomon could have asked for anything and asked for wisdom. The parables of the treasure, the pearl, and the net insist that when God holds the center, everything else finds its proper place beneath him.

Fr. David Johnstone walks through three goods that make up a human life and the order they belong in: the goods of the body, the goods of the mind, and the goods of the heart and soul. Each is genuinely good. Each goes wrong when it takes the top spot.

Along the way: the Jet Li film "Fearless," Jonathan Edwards writing seventy resolutions at seventeen, and Saint Charbel Makhluf, whose years as a hermit have left more than thirty thousand confirmed miracles behind them.

Readings (17th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A):
• 1 Kings 3:5, 7–12
• Psalm 119
• Romans 8:28–30
• Matthew 13:44–52