The Pearl of Great Price
Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Readings for Year A: I Kings 3:5-12; Psalm 118; Romans 8:28-30; Matthew 13:44-52
Last week, around twenty Jesuits and twenty of our “companions in mission”, those who work with us, were involved together in a retreat. Present restrictions meant that most of us made the retreat at home with daily conversations with our directors over the telephone or online. Every day we also had a thirty-minute talk from Austen Ivereigh, the author of two highly regarded books about Pope Francis, on one aspect or another of the Pope’s teaching or pastoral practice.
To prepare we were asked to read the more recent of these two books, “The Wounded Shepherd”. While not managing to read it all, I was very taken by how the Pope is seeking to meet the challenges to faith in the world today. One theme especially impressed me: the importance of a personal encounter with Jesus.
In his encyclical, “Deus Caritas Est”, “God is Love”, Pope Benedict had written that “being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction”.
Francis says he never tires of repeating the statement which takes us to the “very heart of the Gospel”. He believes there are three aspects to the evangelising work of the Church: the proclamation of “truth, of goodness and of beauty”. One problem with evangelisation today, he suspects, is that “beauty”, which attracts us all, has got separated from “truth and goodness”. The Christian life is deeply attractive because it offers an encounter with Jesus in whom we find the beauty we are all seeking. From that encounter, a commitment to “truth”, what we believe about Jesus, and “goodness”, how we live as his disciples, follow. This is why, in the first document he authored as Pope, “Evangelii Gaudium”, “The Joy of the Gospel”, Francis wrote:
“I invite all Christians, everywhere, at this very moment, to a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ … The Lord does not disappoint those who take this risk; whenever we take a step towards Jesus, we come to realize that he is already there, waiting for us with open arms”
We can encounter Jesus in all kinds of ways and in many places. Francis thinks many of us are able to identify an experience which we regard as fundamental in our lives as Christians. I recall a visit I made to Lourdes as a sixth-former at school. I guess I encountered Jesus there, in the sick and in the goodness of those who gave up their summer holidays to care for them. Nothing else then seemed to matter as much as following Jesus. Such an foundational experience enables us to recognise the face of Jesus around us: in the sacraments, scripture and prayer; in the homeless, in migrants struggling to keep life together, in the bereaved, in the young person looking for their way in life.
I was reminded of what the Pope writes about encounters with Jesus by this Sunday’s Gospel. The Kingdom of Heaven, Jesus tells us, is like merchant who finds a pearl of great value. He’s so overjoyed that he sells everything to buy it. This treasure is not a programme or a project. What we are offered is something quite amazing: a relationship, a living relationship, with Jesus himself.
At the end of the retreat last weekend, our provincial, Fr Damian Howard, prayed the familiar words of St Richard of Chichester which are all about this relationship, thanking Jesus for it and asking that it might be deepened, day by day:
Thanks be to Thee, my Lord Jesus Christ, for all the benefits Thou hast given me, for all the pains and insults Thou hast borne for me. O most merciful Redeemer, friend and brother, may I know Thee more clearly, love Thee more dearly, and follow Thee more nearly. Amen.
Fr Michael Holman SJ