Of treasures and pearls

Today's gospel and blog can be accessed here.

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Today’s gospel (Matthew 13: 44-46) offers us two of Jesus’ most exquisite parallels for the kingdom of heaven and its value. On the one hand, Jesus compares it to a treasure found in a field by a man who then sells everything he has just to buy that very field. Likewise, it is like a merchant who finds a pearl of great price and sells everything he owns just to buy that one pearl.

Sometimes, the gospel is almost beyond commentary. Jesus’ parallels were themselves an explanation; what more need do they have of further explanation? Yet our reflecting upon them is quite another matter, for while the similes of this gospel clarify the meaning of Jesus’ preaching, they do not yet ensure that we have interiorised the lessons they contain.

In a way, this is the very point of all our lectio divina exercises. Who is the man who finds treasure in the field and who is the merchant who locates a pearl of great price? Who are they indeed if not ourselves who have been gifted with a secret so precious but which is not yet secure? Before we come into possession of this treasure, this pearl, we have something yet to do: we must live in a way that shows we place the kingdom of God above everything else we value. We must say our yes to God at the centre of our hearts, and live through the experience of sustaining that yes by God’s grace when everything in us secretly or not so secretly says no.

Like the man who finds the treasure in the field, we know the value of the thing we have found. Covering it up is simply a gesture denoting its great desirability. But then comes the negative side of this parallel, if we can call it that: like the man who found the treasure and like the merchant who found the pearl, we must sell everything we have to obtain this one treasure. And how ready are we to do that?

All which I took from thee I did but take,

          Not for thy harms,

But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms

says the Hound of Francis Thompson’s Hound of Heaven.

On the surface, we can act out our readiness for such a sacrifice without too much trouble. We go to church, we say our prayers, perhaps we have devotions, and even take our spiritual lives seriously enough to do a retreat or two. But how ready are we really to sell everything we have, or to be separated from it, to obtain that pearl of great price? Is our heart really fixed on that treasure? Is our peace not disturbed by the loss of other worldly things? How close do we come to the example of St John of the Cross on whose head a wall and ceiling collapsed in the Carmelite friary at Toledo in 1577 and who was plucked from the rubble chuckling to himself? How convinced are we of that terrible but simple line of French writer Léon Bloy: Il n’y a qu’une tristesse, c’est de n’être pas des saints – there is only one real sadness: not to become saints.

The stoical English nationalist Rudyard Kipling told his readers they would be men indeed if they could meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same. But perhaps a similar thing would be true for us too: if we could but value the treasure, the pearl of the kingdom, then we could meet with triumph and disaster and know that only separation from God is to our eternal harm. In principle, everything else ought to be grist to our mill, human losses we can chalk up positively in the quest for that one divine pearl.

This is all a matter of scale that takes us way beyond human calculation. How briefly the lesson of today’s gospel can be recited, and yet how vast are its implications in the landscape of our lives. There is no easy way to prepare ourselves to prefer the immensity of God to the limits of everything else. Only grace can achieve this in us. And the longest journey begins with the smallest step, away from that field where our treasure lies hidden and towards the freedom which God alone can grant us.