The Parable of the Treasure and the Pearl

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“The kingdom of heaven is like a 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. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it” (Matt. 13:44-46).

The word “treasure” appears quite frequently in Scripture. Our Lord seems to want us to have a certain sense of treasure.

We're told in St. Matthew, “Where your heart is, there your treasure is also” (Matt. 6:21). Also in St. Matthew, “Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven” (Matt. 6:20).

“Jesus said, ‘If you wish to be perfect, go and sell all that you have, give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me” (Matt. 19:21).

Our Lord seems to be saying to us that He wants us to have that treasure, to have our eyes on the treasure, to be focused on it.

“If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask him?” (Matt. 7:11).

How much more will your heavenly Father give? Our loving heavenly Father wants to give us treasures all the time, not just in the next life, but also in this one.

John Paul II in one of his Apostolic Exhortations about suffering, Salvifici Doloris, says, “Those who share in the sufferings of Christ preserve in their own sufferings a very special particle of the infinite treasure of the world's Redemption, and can share this treasure with others.”

The magisterial documents also talk about treasure. We're called to be very aware that we possess the treasure, or at least it's there for the taking.

God wants us, and it's very healthy, to have a sense of treasure, and an awareness that we are spiritual millionaires.

If we make acts of thanksgiving frequently for the good things that cultivate a certain awareness of the blessings, of the treasures that God has given to us, then it helps us to appreciate more and more the treasure of our divine vocation: to be a family person, and the vocation to marriage, or the celibate vocation, or the Christian vocation, or the vocation of our professional work, or all the different aspects of the callings that God has given to us.

Little by little in the pathway of our Christian vocation, we discover treasures along the way and help everybody around us to discover those treasures also.

There's an ancient legend about a jeweler who had a precious jewel that he wanted to sell. In order to place this pearl in the proper setting, he had the idea of building a very special box of the finest woods to contain the pearl.

He sought out those woods, he had them brought to him, and then they were polished to a high brilliance. He then reinforced the corners of this box with elegant brass hinges and added a red velvet interior.

As a final step, he centered that red velvet with perfume, and then put in that setting the precious pearl. And the pearl was then placed in the store window of the jeweler in this box.

After a certain amount of time, a rich man came by. He was attracted by what he saw, and so he sat down with the jeweler to negotiate the purchase.

But after a while, the jeweler realized that the man was negotiating for the box, rather than for the pearl.

The man was so overcome by the beauty of the exterior that he failed to see the item of greatest value at the center: the pearl.

But we too can make and do make the same mistake with our faith.

The box is the Church in all its invisible forms. Some people have a love for architectural heritage that they find in the amazing churches and cathedrals the world over.

Some have a great love for its music, a Gregorian chant, or polyphony, or the Masses of Mozart or other great composers. Some people have a great love for Christian art that they find in our churches.

Or some people, for the philosophy of life that our faith gives us, a good ethic by which to live, and clear guidelines for right or wrong.

For other people, it's the Mass in English or the vernacular of whatever country they come in, or the Mass in Latin. The Vatican II Mass said in Latin can be said in any language. We all have our preferences and that's okay as far as it goes.

But all these things are only the box. It's what is [in]{.underline} the box that is the most important.

Concentrating on the box, the language, the music, the architecture—we could commit the sin of idolatry.

We have to look and see what is at its center. That pearl of great value is Christ.

Too many Catholics have never really moved beyond the box; hence, the importance of formation. The precious jewel may be forgotten, hidden in the sacraments—the precious jewel for which the Church exists.

If you don't possess that jewel, the rest is just chaff. Hot air. It may be useless for our salvation.

The Mass said with dignity and prayerfulness, whether in a great basilica or under a tree in a dried-out riverbed in rural Kenya—that links us to the greatest treasure of all, Our Lord Jesus Christ. That's what it's all about.

The jewel contained there, inside, is Christ. It is Him that we seek.

He invites us to find Him today through worship, through the liturgy. “I am the bread of life,” He tells us. “He who comes to me will never be hungry. He who believes in me will never thirst” (John 6:35).

We need to focus on Him, on His message of love. We need to take Him into our hearts, especially at the solemn moment of the Consecration at Mass, when the bread and wine are held up.

Try and look at those realities and say something from your heart like, “My Lord and my God.” Or simply, “Jesus, I love you” or “Increase my faith, my hope, and my charity.”

And when you enter the church, genuflect mindfully to Him who is in the tabernacle, as a real act of adoration and of worship.

It's for Him that we come to Mass in whatever language it is in, or in whatever hymns that may be sung—no matter how the singing may strike us.

There was an article in the—I think it was—the London Times twenty years ago, welcoming some very prominent member of English society, who could have been a member of the royal family, to the Catholic Church.

The author was not a great fan of the sort of music that was being sung in Church those days. They had a beautiful article welcoming this person to the Church, to its riches. But the final line said, “Come on in, it's awful.” Well, there was a bit of humor there in that.

But it doesn't matter about these accidental things that are part of the Mass, part of our Church, part of the box, as long as we focus on the treasure. He is the pearl of great price.

We have a treasure of the Holy Spirit present in our hearts and souls in grace. Nothing quite compares to that. “We will come and make our abode with him” (John 14:23).

We have a treasure in the documents of the Church. Interestingly, Scott Hahn, when he converted, remarked that some of the greatest treasures of the Catholic Church are hidden in our documents, and so few Catholics read them. They're unaware of the treasures.

We're a bit like that person who was walking along the beach one day and their foot tripped on a little bag or something, and they picked up this little pouch that was there and found it full of stones, and they began to fling the stones far out into the sea.

As they flung the stone as far as they could out into the sea, they said, “When I get rich, I'm going to buy a big car.”

And they took another stone and flung it even farther. “When I get rich, I'm going to buy fine clothes.”

And took another stone and flung it farther and said, “When I get rich, I'm going to buy a big house.”

And so on, down to the last stone. But then a ray of sunlight hit the stone and the thing glistened. The person looked again at the stone. It was a diamond! The pouch had been full of diamonds.

This person was carelessly throwing these diamonds far out into the sea, throwing away the treasures that he had in his hand, and dreaming about treasures that he might never have.

We could ask Our Lord to give us that sense of treasure in our faith—to get to know our faith a little more; to cherish the sacraments, particularly the most perfect of the sacraments, which St. Thomas Aquinas says is the real presence of Our Lord in the Blessed Eucharist.

We also have the treasure of our vocation: our Christian vocation, our marriage, our family vocation, our celibate vocation, our professional vocation. Something of immense value, and a proof of a special love by God.

With the parable of the treasure hidden in the field and the parable of the pearl of great price, Our Lord is describing the great worth of the kingdom of heaven, and also how people should pursue it.

“Seek first the kingdom of God, things that are above, and all these other things will be given you besides” (Matt. 6:33).

The treasure and the pearl are images that have been traditionally used to express the grandeur of our divine calling—the way to follow Christ in this life, so as to be with Him forever in the next; the means to store up those treasures for ourselves.

The treasure signifies that abundance of gifts which one receives with a vocation:

The grace to overcome all obstacles. “My grace is sufficient for you” (2 Cor. 12:9). Grace to grow in fidelity day by day. Grace to do apostolate, to lift up the spiritual temperature of our environment, wherever we may be.

And the pearl represents the beauty and the splendor of the call.

Every day after receiving Our Lord in Holy Communion, in your thanksgiving, thank God for the vocation that He's given to you. Not only is that vocation something of great worth, but it's also the most perfect ideal that any person can follow.

One spiritual writer says, “There's a key difference between the two parables with respect to the prizes. The discovery of the pearl presupposes a great amount of effort, a search; while the treasure buried in the field seems to have been discovered almost by accident” (Franz M. Moschner, The Kingdom of Heaven in Parables).

That's how it is with Christ, the way He calls people. Many find their vocation almost without looking for it. Other people have a certain restlessness in their hearts until they find the pearl of great value.

Sometimes God allows people to labor for years. I met a man once who started reading—he had no religion—he started reading C.S. Lewis.

Then he heard about Chesterton, and then he heard about Fulton Sheen, and from there he heard about something called the Summa Theologica by St. Thomas Aquinas. He had read one-third of the Summa Theologica before he came to talk with me.

Speaking to him was like speaking to the Pope. He had such a Catholic mind. Within twelve months, he was baptized.

Maybe we don't have to labor that hard for that calling that God gives us. But the important thing is that we find that pearl of great value.

If God permits that restlessness in human hearts and minds whereby they're seeking the truth, it's God who sows that restlessness in the soul.

Edith Stein said as a Jewess, “Before I became a Catholic, my only prayer was to seek the truth.” She became St. Teresa Benedict of the Cross, one of the Patronesses of Europe.

Many have said to Our Lord in the intimacy of their souls, like the rich young man, “All these I have observed from my youth; what do I still lack?” (Matt 19:20).

Whether the search has been a rapid one or a long drawn-out one, the prize is of enormous worth.

We're told in The Forge by St. Josemaría that a vocation is “an immense honor, a motive for great and holy pride, a mark of predilection, a very special affection that God has shown at a particular time, but which has been in his mind from all eternity” (Josemaría Escrivá, The Forge, Point 18).

“I have chosen you out before the foundation of the world” (cf. Eph. 1:4). So once a person has discovered their vocation, they have to make an effort to live up to it.

The Lord calls and invites us, but He doesn't force our will. After the pearl has been discovered or the treasure found, one more step is required. It's the step of our personal response, which is identical in both parables.

“The man went and sold all that he had and bought that field” (Matt. 13:44). Generosity and detachment are indispensable conditions for perseverance in the vocation.

We're told also in The Forge, “You wrote: ‘This passage from the Gospel has taken root in my mind. I had read it so many times before, without grasping its meaning, its divine flavor.’ Yes, ‘everything’! The prudent man has to sell everything to obtain the treasure—the precious pearl of Glory” (J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 993). There is nothing in the whole wide world of such great value.

“What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but loses his own soul?” (Mark 8:36).

God weighed the weight of one soul against the material weight of the whole world, and the soul won. One soul was of more value. That's why we have to go after each soul that we meet for Christ.

God plays a part in the life of every single person. He beckons to everyone.

In the book Mary of Nazareth, we're told that as soon as someone has discovered their divine vocation, the disparate pieces of his past life seem to come together. What had previously been a riddle or a mystery is now clearly understood—why we got to know a certain person, the special help we experienced at different moments. … The vocation also casts its light upon our future life, which we now see to be full of meaning.

Christ gives great meaning to our life. Our divine calls in different places give great meaning and purpose. We know where we're going, we know what our life is all about, we know how to get there.

None of the protagonists in the parables showed any hesitation or regret at the thought of selling all that they possessed, because they saw how great the treasure was, and of how much more value were the spiritual realities.

Their new wealth was so tremendous that nothing could put it in the shade.

The same reaction holds true for all those who give their love to Christ. They give all and they get all.

The Lord makes a point in order to emphasize the joy that accompanies the sale of the goods. We might wonder: What were these people selling? A house, furniture, ornaments, things that represent years of work?

But they sold everything without haggling, without a lot of “hemming and hawing,” with joy. They sold everything because they knew very well the worth of the treasure that they would be getting in exchange.

It's interesting how Our Lord speaks so frequently in Scripture about the treasure, and how He wants us to have that sense of treasure, so that we recognize the treasure when it comes. We yearn to acquire it; we treasure it when we have it.

We see that nothing on the planet is of any value beside this treasure. Beside this wealth, all things pale in importance.

“They left all things and followed him” (cf. Luke 5:11). God plays a part in the life of each person, and He does so in a concrete way, at a certain age, in a special situation.

He challenges us according to the nature of these circumstances, which had been foreseen by Him for all eternity.

Jesus passes by and He beckons, “Come, follow me” (Matt. 4:19).

To some, He calls at the first hour, when they're young. He asks for their ambitions, their hopes and dreams, all of which may seem so full of promise.

Others are called when they reach the age of maturity. Still others may be called in their final years.

The Lord finds the majority of these men and women immersed in the middle of the world. Matthew was sitting in the tax collector’s place (Matt. 9:9). Peter and Andrew and John were mending their nets, “for they were fishermen” (Matt. 4:18).

Our Lord prefers all these people to remain in the world, that they may sanctify the world through the exercise of their professional work, so that they may be witnesses, lighted lamps.

Our Lord finds others who are married. He asks them to sanctify the family, with all its joys and sorrows, possibly with its heartbreaks, its losses, its contradictions, its mysteries.

Regardless of what our age may be when we receive our vocation, that call, we find that Our Lord will give it to us along with a wonderful interior youthfulness.

The Old Testament says, “I will go unto the altar of God, who gives joy to my youth” (Ps. 43:4).

Our Lord says in the Book of Revelations, “I can renew all things” (Rev. 21:5). I can teach you to throw off routine in your life; to raise your vision to a higher plane.

What, then, is the best age at which to give oneself to Our Lord? At the age when He calls.

The most important thing is to be generous with Him, without questioning God's timetable. It's never too late to follow Him. And it's never too soon.

St. Gregory the Great comments on, “The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search to find pearls. When finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it” (Matt. 13:45-46).

He writes that “nothing has the slightest value compared to that one pearl. The soul gives up everything for the sake of that treasure, forsaking all that it had found beautiful in the world. The splendor of that finest of pearls has captured the soul's complete attention” (cf. Gregory the Great, Homilies on the Gospels).

Whoever is called, no matter what his or her personal circumstances, ought to give Our Lord everything that He asks for. Such circumstances can vary. Giving everything often doesn't mean that everybody gives in the same way.

A married person can't abandon what belongs to their family—the love for their spouse, their dedication to the welfare and education of their children.

On the contrary, giving everything to this person very often entails living the same life in an entirely new manner, which means doing a better job of fulfilling one's ordinary duties.

One spiritual writer says, “In the real world of the husband and wife who belatedly discover the vocational meaning of matrimony, this ‘discovery’ always appears as part of their Christian vocation. Their response is an important aspect of their total obedience to the faith” (Pedro Rodriguez, Vocation, Work, Contemplation).

To follow Our Lord more closely, we can't be content with remaining in our own little world. There should be no doubt in our minds that clarity has to be brought to souls.

It’s necessary that we enter into our environment so as to transform it from within. We should increase the number of our friendships, giving light to many souls.

This is one of the ways that we show Our Lord that we really, really appreciate the treasure, that we value it.

The greatest event of our life is our receiving the calling from Our Lord, just as it was for those He called on the shores of the lake.

Yet to follow Christ wholeheartedly is never easy. The person who enjoys a more or less steady job and may think that the pattern of their life is “set” should recognize the danger lurking in this false tranquility, which may be even considered one's rightful due.

Christ asks us to break with routine, to cast aside the mediocre, to go beyond a life of compromise. With the divine vocation, Christ challenges us to undergo a profound change in our daily conduct.

God asks for everything, including what we may have been reserving for ourselves, all our nice little plans.

He gives us light to see our failings which may have, up to now, been looked upon as beyond reforming, but which perhaps turn out to be the price for securing the pearl of great value.

It is Christ Himself who seeks us out: “You did not choose me, but I chose you” (John 15:16).

And when He calls, He gives us at the same time the graces we need to follow Him, from the beginning of the way and also throughout the whole of our life.

St. Joseph, who is our father and lord, found the treasure of his life and the pearl of great value in his mission of watching over Jesus and Mary here on earth.

We can ask Our Lord to help us to live up to whatever He asks of us, like St. Joseph did, and that we might do so with generosity and with joy.

We rest in the knowledge that nothing is so worthwhile as to fulfill one's proper vocation.

If we look at Our Lady's response when the angel announced to her, we see how she responded to the treasure. She appreciated the pearl.

“Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done unto me” (Luke 1:38). The sky is the limit. Ask whatever you want.

And shortly afterwards, “Mary went with haste into the hill country” (Luke 1:39). She showed with her deeds that she really appreciated the treasure and the pearl.

Mary, may you enlighten my mind, my pathway, my vision, so that I too may follow you along that pathway of savoring the treasure and the pearl that God has placed in my life.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

UI