Sunday July 26th 2020: Read Br Michael’s Gospel Reflection The Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
The Hidden and Buried Treasure
One of my favourite television programmes is the Antiques Road Show. People bring their prized and personal possessions and have experts look at them to be valued. Some are worth are lot of money. They are, with other antiques often called ‘priceless work of art.’ When countries have collections of art, they often call them part of their ‘national treasury.’ For those who can afford it, they spend whatever it takes to buy and own a ‘priceless work of art.’ Collectors spend millions on rare paintings and then often lock them away in their own private galleries – what a waste!
In the gospel today, Jesus tells three small parables in effort to describe the Kingdom of God. The first two tell us about the hidden or buried treasure in the field, the second is the pearl of great price. The third is the parable of the net filled with all sorts of fish.
In the first of the today’s parables, Jesus tells us that the kingdom of God is like someone who finds a hidden treasure in a field. They sell all they have to buy the field. This implies that they realise and recognise the deep value of what they have discovered. They give all they have to own it. In the gospel the person had to buy the field to get the treasure. The same happens with the person who finds the pearl of great price. They find the pearl, go and sell all they have and buy it. Here’s the great thing we need to realise; we already have the treasure, the Kingdom of God; it has already been freely given to us by Jesus; we don’t have to go and buy it – it’s already ours.
More significantly, as Jesus tells us, ‘the kingdom of God is within you.’ (Luke 17.20). The kingdom of God is in each of us; all we have to do is look within our daily lives and activities to find and experience it. What price or more importantly, value do we put on the Kingdom of God in our daily lives? Do we do all we can to engage with it and do all we can to promote it? This is described beautifully in the poem ‘Bright Field’ by the Welsh poet R.S. Thomas; ‘I have seen the sun break through to illumine a small field for a while, and gone my way and forgotten it. But that was the pearl of great price, the one field that had the treasure in it. I realise now that I must give all that I have to possess it.’
Unlike those in the gospel, the Kingdom of God will not ‘cost’ us anything, well not money anyway. But it will cost us something else. It will cost us our personal faith and commitment on a daily basis. Like the mustard seed, the Kingdom of God is sown within us. It is a buried and hidden treasure. It is up to us, with God’s help to find and nourish it. We are being invited to look for and dig up this treasure and bring it out into the light of our own lives and the lives of others. Here is the challenge of finding the hidden treasure; the Kingdom of God; once we find it we are called to share it with others, not keep it to ourselves. As we share our treasure with others, it doesn’t diminish or become smaller in any way; it grows and becomes even bigger!
This coming week, look for signs of God’s Kingdom within yourself and in those around you – it is there, just waiting to be discovered.
– Br Michael Moore OMI
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Gospel
Matthew 13:44-52 ©
He sells everything he owns and buys the field
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