Dear Christ the King Family,
What do we value most or, in other words, what do we treasure? Each of us treasures certain things, people, or ideals that impact and motivate everything about our lives. Another way of putting it comes in the form of a favorite prayer of mine, attributed to Fr. Perdo Arrupe, SJ:
“Nothing is more practical than finding God, than falling in Love in a quite absolute, final way.
What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything.
It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you do with your evenings,
how you spend your weekends, what you read, whom you know, what breaks your heart,
and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in Love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.”
If we treasure God above all things, even if it is in hidden ways, that ‘falling-in-love’ will decide everything, and nothing else has a value that compares. All very true, and that’s certainly something the Parables of the Treasure Buried in the Field and the Pearl of Great Price invite us to contemplate.
At the same time, there’s another perspective to the parable that I think we often overlook. We often think we’re the treasure hunters and that God is playing some elaborate game of ‘hide and seek’ in our lives…but is it not also the case that it is actually God who reveals in Jesus Christ that He truly and perfectly treasures us as well? God, who humbly sold all He had in Jesus Christ on the Cross to purchase our lives, and who still “buries” the priceless treasure of His Living Eucharistic Presence in our bodies, which were formed from the earth? When we realize that we are valued and treasured by another, it makes us more fully alive than ever before and brings out the best in us. If that’s true for the way other people with imperfect love can impact our lives, how much more can that change and transform us when we realize that God feels that way about us? We might just come to discover that just as we have been seeking that which we treasure most as we fall in love with the Lord, that in fact He has been seeking us out all along, and treasures each of us in ways we might not have realized.
In Christ, Our King,
Fr. David
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