Homily
for Thursday
Week
5 of Ordinary Time
Feb.
12, 2026
1
Kings 11: 4-13
Christian
Brothers, St. Joseph’s Residence, N.R.
King Solomon amid His Wives & Concubines
(godsbless.ing/commentary)
“When Solomon
was old, his wives turned his heart to strange gods, and his heart was not
entirely with the Lord, his God” (1 Kgs 11: 4).
The preceding
verse, which wasn’t part of our reading, informs us that Solomon has 700 wives
and 300 concubines. He must not have had
a lot of time for statecraft! One
commentary remarks drily that the “number is surely somewhat exaggerated.”[1]
In any case,
Solomon is seduced by his foreign wives to take up the worship of foreign
gods. [Clip of “An Ordinary Man,” My Fair Lady] Perhaps some form of dementia has struck Solomon
in his old age, or perhaps he’s just trying to keep his harem happy. Hundreds of years later, St. Paul will
caution the Corinthians: “The unmarried
man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the
married man is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please his wife, and his
interests are divided” (I, 7:32-34).
The Lord isn’t
pleased with Solomon’s divided heart. As
the Lord abandoned Saul for his disobedience, now he’ll abandon Solomon; this
is the sacred historian’s reading in hindsight.
But for David’s sake, the dynasty will survive and will continue to rule
Judah—in contrast to the repeated coups and leadership chaos that will engulf
the northern tribes.
Solomon fails
to persevere in his relationship with the Lord, which had begun so well. Any one of us is susceptible to that
temptation, that failure of the heart.
One theory for the last line of the Lord’s Prayer is that we’re praying
to be delivered from the final temptation—to abandon the Lord at the end or
despair that he’ll abandon us or perhaps even doubt that he’s there. So we do well to pray for final perseverance,
which we do, e.g., whenever we pray that the holy Mother of God will be with us
“now and at the hour of our death.”
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