The Pearl of Great Price (17th Sunday Ordinary A)

“The Kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field, which a person finds and hides again, and out of joy goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. 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” (Mt 13:44-46).

There seems to be two ways of finding a treasure.  First is by accident or what poets call serendipity. It is very much like a farmer ploughing the field not his own and discovers in a great surprise a buried treasure which he has not been looking for in the first place.  We have our own word for this: Swerte.  In this manner, the treasure seems to reveal itself to us as a surprise in the midst of our daily concerns and increasingly boring preoccupations.

In the parable, the treasure refers to God, his reign of love. God has a way of revealing his love to us right in the middle of our mundane preoccupations in life.  Many a times we are too preoccupied to notice God.  He is the treasure sitting right under our nose but we don’t recognize it. So we keep on ploughing the field of our useless anxieties without any idea what we have been missing. But there are times, some kairos moments, when we finally encounter God. And henceforth, our lives take a different turn because such a religious experience calls us to “sell everything we have” or to let go of everything we are clinging to in order to be free to hold on to God, our only real treasure.

The other way of finding a treasure is by a careful search. It is like the merchant searching for the finest pearl day after day until he finds the pearl of great price.  Most of us experience life as a search for meaning.  We are in constant search for what is good and what brings meaning to life.  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.

But there is one discovery 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).

The twin parables seem to instruct us that we first find God by discovering him serendipitously.  In the heart of the daily grind of life God surprisingly touches us with his loving presence.   And it is when we have been graciously touched by his love that we begin to seek Him even more, leading us to let go of everything in our possession that hinder us from embracing God’s love fully.

Interestingly, in the The Only Necessary Thing, spiritual writer Henri Nouwen has this to say:

“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 by 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. “

Our hearts do not stop at the surprise discovery of the treasure of God’s love.  On the contrary, finding God is only the beginning of a true and deeper search for Him and for his unconditional love.  We may all have experienced the surprising touch of God’s love, our invitation is clear: Just like the farmer and the merchant in the parable, we have to go, sell everything we have, and buy the precious find. We are invited to make the courageous decision to make God and his reign of love the central concern of our lives. Everything else that we have must only be at the service of our loving relationship with God.