Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

The merchant searches for fine pearls. He searches. That detail is essential to understanding the parable. The merchant does not merely happen upon the pearl; he actively looks for it.

Solomon does something similar in the first reading. When God allows him to ask for anything, Solomon does not ask for riches, power, or a long life. He asks for an understanding heart. He knows which treasure is worth seeking. The psalmist likewise declares that God’s word is more precious than gold and silver.

We, too, are called to seek God actively—in prayer and in the Scriptures. But we struggle with this. Prayer does not always come easily, and the Scriptures can sometimes seem dense and confusing. Yet we must continue to seek. The desire—and the sincere attempt that follows—is already evidence of grace at work. I have experienced this in my own life.

Before ordination, the Church requires a retreat so that a man may prepare spiritually for the sacrament and for the ministry he is about to receive. My own retreat took the form of seven days of silence. I had a Bible and a rosary. I had no entertainment, and I did not speak, even at meals. I read only the Gospels, returning to them again and again and meditating carefully upon them.

This was not easy. Like most of you, my life had been saturated with noise, entertainment, and things to do. Silence was work. Prayer was work. It required a continual effort to renounce the distractions of the world and seek God.

During that retreat, I read the parable of the pearl of great price. As I meditated upon it, I imagined finding that pearl and holding it in my hand. The pearl was God himself. I had found the treasure, and I sat there beholding him and treasuring him.

Then something unexpected happened. The image shifted. It turned inside out. Suddenly, I was small, looking up at Christ himself. I realized that now I was the pearl—and the Lord was holding his treasure in his hand.

Then the parable opened before me in a new way. My desire to seek the Lord, the pearl of great price, had itself been a grace given to me. He had planted within me the desire to find him, and he had strengthened me to continue looking. Yet all along, it had also been the Lord seeking me. His grace moved me not only so that I might find him and rest in his joy, but so that he might draw me more completely to himself.

The Lord tells us to seek the treasure that is the Kingdom of God because he first treasures us. There is a mutual seeking and finding—but the Lord always takes the initiative. Even our desire for him is his gift. Before we begin looking for him, he has already called us. Before we reach out to take hold of him, he has already taken hold of us.

Cultivating silence, returning again and again to the Scriptures, and persevering in prayer: this is the work to which we are called as Christians. This is what the parable means when it speaks of seeking.

Certainly, we cannot spend every day of our lives in absolute silence or devote endless hours to reading Scripture. Nor are we required to do so. The Lord calls us where we are, within the lives and responsibilities he has given us. Ultimately, it is not our effort that produces the encounter, as though God were the reward for mastering a spiritual technique. It is his grace.

What is required of us is openness. We allow grace to awaken within us a desire for God. We allow that desire to move us to seek him in ways appropriate to our lives and responsibilities. And there we will find him—or, perhaps better stated, we will discover that he has found us.

So sell off the endless trivialities of this world and its banal entertainments. Let go of whatever consumes your attention but cannot satisfy your heart. Seek the Kingdom of God. There you will find a treasure of true worth. And perhaps, just when you think you have taken hold of the pearl of great price, grace will turn the image around. You will discover that Christ has already taken hold of you. In him, you will find the treasure you have been seeking. And in his hands, you will discover your own infinite worth.