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17th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A, July 30, 2023
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With the Kingdom of Heaven ushered in likened to a buried treasure and a precious pearl by Jesus, and then selling off all you have to purchase the field or the pearl, obviously, this parable can be told and make perfect sense only before the days of wills and estate planning where it’s all left to family members. Imagine the reaction of your family if you sold off all you own to purchase one item, even if that item was your guarantee through the Pearly Gates? Your family would call you crazy in a not-so-loving way, and get angry at you. Or, they would be forced to call you a Saint if they were interested in getting it right.
King Solomon, who, after God told him to make one request and it will be granted, asked the Lord for the gift of discernment of what is right and what is wrong. No money requested; no long life; nothing against his enemies. Just the wisdom to know the right decision before God. Every time a choice was before him.
King Solomon would not have called you crazy for selling off all you own for one treasured field or one small pearl. The King would have called such a person a Saint for desiring entrance into heaven so much. Even at the expense of looking like a fool to family and friends, with no lawyer to help organize an estate plan. Not when the ultimate plan in our life is to arrive at salvation.
St. Francis of Assisi was called a fool by many the day he radically moved his life from the world to Christ. Look where it landed him.
We’ve had thousands of different plans over the length of our years. Many of them genuinely good, some of them self-serving. But is the goal of heaven, the goal of being with our Lord Jesus, with Blessed Mary and the Saints, with loved ones and friends hopefully, is this goal of heaven’s glory, is it always attached to any plan we map out for ourselves in this short life?
If there exists a danger in not willing to sell off all we have to purchase the greatest prize of our humanity, the caution in such hesitation to sell off, stems from planting our bodies and souls much too firmly in a world that passes by the day. And this gets to the heart of what our Lord is teaching in these first two parables of buying the field and purchasing the pearl. The wisdom to set our eyes, our hearts and our minds on the ultimate prize, the first treasure of all treasures. Thus, we grow into King Solomon who perfected right from wrong. A most basic principle to live a God-fearing life.
In fairness, most all of us know right from wrong, for the most part. While not always choosing the right. In our present times, there are those who have convinced themselves that what is obviously wrong to God, they’ve called it right.
It’s always wrong to destroy the life of an unborn child. Or to intentionally end the life of an elderly or sick person. We’ve made some human exceptions to these life-or-death scenarios. Even to the point where the human exception accuses the defender of life of not being compassionate, saying that killing human life is somehow more compassionate. But in the eyes of God, seeing as God sees, there are no exceptions in this matter.
Are we not called, as Christians, to see the world and all within it through the eyes of God? For those who do, they’ve sold everything off and purchased the field or the pearl. In doing so, such people have taken their personal eyesight, and placed it right into the eyeballs of God, so that they always understand with wisdom what is right before God, and then do it.
If we’re not at this good place in our faith lives yet, I pray we know some people who are, and that we have the fortitude and humility to allow their holy lives to influence ours. Teaching us what it takes to purchase heaven’s field.
We have many wonderful Scriptural examples of those who purchased the field or the pearl, leading to the ultimate prize of heaven. All the Apostles, minus Judas, who made the wrong choice, who, rather than buying the field, tossed his 30 shekels into a field of blood before his final wrong choice.
The Apostles grew into giving their lives to the Lord. Their unconditional love for Jesus did not happen overnight. For most of us, it takes time and growth to arrive at the point of “selling” off the lesser good things for the one true good, Christ Jesus. The very human Apostles did so.
There’s St. Mary Magdalene, who loitered outside the tomb of Jesus, and it paid off for her. She purchased the pearl of great price before she bought the farm. And the number one example of selling it all for Christ is his Mother, Blessed Mary. She’s the only person in history who sold everything in the future at the moment of her Immaculate Conception.
But today, we have King Solomon, who asks God, for the good of his people, to discern right from wrong. As we do the same, may we keep our eyes on the gift of salvation, and the Savior who won it for us.