The Quest (17th Sunday A)

Three years ago I started to write a blog sharing my reflections on the Sunday liturgical readings.  I entitled it Pearl of Great Price in direct reference to today’s gospel reading (Mt. 13: 44-46). Needless to say, the parable of the pearl of great price is significant to me.  Hence, I would like to share what it is to me hoping others would also find spiritual inspiration from it.

“Again, the Kingdom of heaven is like a merchant searching for fine pearls. When he finds a pearl of great price, he goes and sells all that he has and buys it” (vv. 45-46).

Life is a search.  Always we search for the good like the merchant searching for fine pearls.  Oftentimes we have the feeling that the search is endless.  Our hearts are never satisfied by what we find.  One day we feel like we’re happy with what we have; only to find out another day that we’re losing interest in it and we’re eyeing another object of our excitement.

 I finally bought a digital camera after a long and arduous process of canvassing making sure I got what I wanted.  I started taking pictures which brought me as far as China! But after a while, I felt like I needed something more powerful to allow me to take more pictures as candid

 as possible without the subject noticing it.  To cut the long story short, I got a camera with 12X optical-zoom specification which allowed me to shoot from afar.  What I didn’t understand was, when I already had it and even as I brought it with me anywhere, I lost interest in taking pictures altogether!  What I wanted to do was to pose!

There is one discovery in life though that liberates us from this pointless meandering search. It is the discovery of the pearl of God’s love. When we experience in our life the love of God, we gain a new perspective. Everything else that we deemed valuable and even essential takes a relative significance. A person who has in his or her heart the love of God no longer clings to whatever possession for he or she knows now what is truly essential. A person who discovers the pearl of God’s love sells all that he or she has in order to possess the one thing that the human heart truly longs. In the words of St. Therese of Avila: Quien a Dios tiene, nada le falta. Solo Dios basta ( He who has God does not lack anything. God is enough).

Interestingly, for the spiritual writer Henri Nouwen, the search of the human heart still does not stop at the discovery of the treasure of God’s love.  On the contrary, finding God is the beginning of a true and deeper search for God.  But this time, we know what we truly ache for—the only necessary thing.

Let me share Henri Nouwen’s words hoping they would make your hearts smile too in joyful agreement. Culled from The Only Necessary Thing:

“You can be truly happy that you have found the treasure. But you should not be so naive as to think that you already own it.... Having found the treasure puts you on a new quest for it. The spiritual life is a long and often arduous search for what you have already found. You can seek God only when you have already found God. The desire for God’s unconditional love is the fruit of having been touched but that love.”

“Because finding the treasure is only the beginning of the search, you have to be careful. If you expose the treasure to others without fully owning it, you might harm yourself and even lose the treasure. A newfound love needs to be nurtured in a quiet, intimate space. Overexposure kills it.... Finding the treasure without being ready yet to fully own it will make you restless. This is the restlessness of the search for God. “

Wow. What more can I say?

Maybe to sum up the point:  There are two levels of searching—one for the useless things and another for the only necessary thing.  Both seem to propel us to restlessness. The former elicits restlessness because of the growing emptiness that gnaws at our being. The latter makes us restless because we can’t wait to fully possess what truly matters—the pearl of God’s love.

What search makes me restless?