TEXT: The Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew 13:44-52

It has long been a favorite passage of scripture for me from St. Paul’s Second Letter to the Church at Corinth.  It is II Corinthians 4:4-7:

5 For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants * for Jesus' sake.
6 For it is the God who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
7 But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us.

My own life, has thus far, been a life that has realized this reality.  I am an earthen vessel.  We, the Church, the People of God, are earthen vessels.  But, we have this Treasure to show us that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us.

Hidden in the field of this world was the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Hidden in the womb of the Mother of God is the One who would be born and be Immanuel, God with us.

Hidden in the Ark of the Covenant, there is revealed to a heart sick humanity, the God Man, the Treasure that would lay aside all in order to purchase the whole field that we might have eternal life and become heirs with Christ, the King, in the Reign of Christ, the Reign of God.

44 "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

So precious is this Treasure.

In his Treatise on the Love of God, St. Francis de Sales says -- "Better is the possession of a small treasure found than the expectation of a greater which is to find."  (8, 12)

Treasure means -- "abundance of gifts," is something that is stumbled upon in the parable -- yet, the finder is filled with joy.  Faith, vocation, wisdom, the desire for heaven are sometimes suddenly discovered unexpectedly, and often after a long search -- yet, those who discover true Value, the Treasure, go and sell what they have and "buy it."

I know of one who tired of the world and left all to follow Jesus.  Perhaps, you know of some ho have done this too.  The world’s ways are never satisfying.  They only help us through the pedagogy of the Holy Spirit to realize that this world’s ways are not where we find true satisfaction.

Our satisfaction ultimately is only found in God.

God is our Treasure, the blessed Fruit of the womb of Mary.  Mary found her Treasure in God Alone.

Shall we search for true riches in the world’s ways?  No, we may search, but, we will never find the satisfaction of God alone in the world that denies Jesus.

The Treasure we have in our earthen vessels is also more.

It is like a Pearl of great price.  It has beauty.

45 "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, 46 who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.

St. Jerome said -- "A pearl will shine in the midst of squalor and a gem of the first water will sparkle in the mire."  (Letters 66, 7)

How like a Pearl is the Church.  It begins with a little tiny grain of sand from the ocean that lodges between the Mother of pearl in the oyster shell and the animal, and, the irritation between the animal and Mother of pearl produces the finest of gems from the ocean depths over years of development, as the Mother of pearl and animal softly and caressingly, round over time what began as a little grain of sand.

There is a message there for each of us.

The beauty of the Pearl cannot happen as the gem it becomes without proper formation in the manner that God has ordained.  It seems that proper formation only comes through suffering and time.  Let us rejoice that we have our Mother with us to help for us, the Church, into that Pearl that God has laid aside in Jesus all to buy us with his own precious Blood.  Let us also lay aside all to buy it by grace through faith in the merits of Jesus.

Yet, there is more.

47 "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net which was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind;
48 when it was full, men drew it ashore and sat down and sorted the good into vessels but threw away the bad.
49 So it will be at the close of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous,
50 and throw them into the furnace of fire; there men will weep and gnash their teeth.

Then, there are the fish of every kind.

[Some of the Greek manuscripts say -- "all kinds of things," meaning -- algae, weeds, or, rubbish that may be caught in the net.]

The net is the Church (the Gk. "ekklesia" Lat. "ecclesia,"  -- the called out ones).  The sea is the world.

There is in this parable the dogmatic truth of the Judgment.  God will separate the good from the bad.

St. Gregory the Great said -- "All these things are said to make sure that no one can make the excuse that he does not know about them: this excuse would be valid only if eternal punishment were spoken about in ambiguous terms."  (In Evangelia homiliae, 11)

Contrary to popular opinion, Jesus spoke much about Judgment.  It is also true that Jesus is Mercy, and extends it to all in the present day.

He asks,

51 "Have you understood all this?" They said to him, "Yes."
52 And he said to them, "Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old."

We are responsible to bring forth from the Old Testament and the New Testament what is old and new.

In the Old Testament (see Luke 24), Jesus is seem in all the scriptures as he explained to his disciples and the two on the road to Emmaus.

We have a responsibility before God to proclaim the whole truth and nothing but the truth of God in the Old and New Testaments, focusing upon the Holy Gospel.

We will be judged accordingly.

In the Hebrew / Jewish tradition, a "scribe," (Gk. "grammateus"), means -- experts in the Torah, scholars versed in the Law, scribes.  Here, we find new meanings extended to our own day within the Church.

There are two aspects of this for us.

There is the "ecclesia docens," the teaching Church, the Holy Father, Magesterium, Bishops, Priests, Deacons, other catechists, perhaps.  Then, there is the "ecclesia discens" the learning Church, however, every Christian who has received the teaching of Jesus, has the responsibility, as the People of God in Communion with the Church, to pass on what we have heard to others.
It behooves all of us to know our Faith, to read and study our Bible and Catechism.  Why?  That we all might do the work of the laity, as more fully identified in "Apostolicam actuositatem," The Decree of the Apostolate of the Laity.

Let us all be proclaimers of the "good news" we know to be working within our lives, as we are in communion with the Life of the Church.



Deus et Sanctissima.