The Pearl of Great Price

The story in today’s Gospel, Mt.13: 44-46, is about the merchant who searches for “a treasure buried in a field.” He/She goes out to find that treasure. When found, this person sells all that he/she has and buys it. The author of the reflections for this Gospel given in the July/August 2012 issue of The Word among Us, p.52, suggests to us that the merchant is God.

Each of us is the pearl God is seeking. We got buried in debris, so to speak, when Adam and Eve disobeyed and distrusted God—a disobedience and a distrust that all of us inherited. Their turning away from God intensified God’s search for us. The Son of God took on human nature to show us the way back to God and to redeem us from the destruction of sin: the loss of right relationship with God, our Creator, ourselves and one another.

 

Imagine God saying to you:

 

(Insert your name), you are the treasure I seek and for which I sent my only begotten Son into the world. He paid your ransom. You are now my precious pearl of great price. I want to find you, no matter what. I will look for you in any place where you have hidden yourself. I will walk on whatever thorny path you are traveling and enter whatever cistern into which you have fallen. Even if you have wandered off into murky, muddy waters, I will enter those waters in search of you. When I find you and you accept being found, I will polish you until you glow with my glory as the brightest star shines in the heavens.

 

God's heart is bent on us! Where is your heart? For what does your heart pine? What treasures are you seeking? God is seeking you to join Him and all the angels and saints at the eternal banquet of love, beginning here on this earth.