“A Treasure Buried” by
Rev. Paul Berghout (@FatherPB)
The LORD appeared to
Solomon in a dream at night. God said, “Ask something of me, and I will give it
to you.” Solomon answered: “O LORD, my God, you have made me, your servant,
king to succeed my father, David; but I am a mere youth, not knowing at all how
to act. I serve you in the midst of the people whom you have chosen, a people
so vast that it cannot be numbered or counted. Give your servant, therefore, an
understanding heart to judge your people and to distinguish right from wrong. For
who is able to govern this vast people of yours?” 1 Kings 3:5, 6-9
Truly I love your
commandments more than gold, more than the finest gold. Thus, I follow all your
precepts; every wrong way I hate. Psalm 119:127-128
“The kingdom of
heaven is like a treasure buried in a field, which a person finds and hides
again, and out of joy goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again,
the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant searching for fine pearls. When he
finds a pearl of great price, he goes and sells all that he has and buys it. Matthew 13:44-46
Study
“The kingdom of
heaven is like a treasure buried in a field…”
A foolish old farmer, so
the story goes, concluded one day that the oats he had fed his mule for years
were costing him too much. So, he
hatched a plan: He mixed a little sawdust in with the feed, and then a little
more the next day, and even more the next, each time reducing the amount of
oats in the mix. The mule didn’t seem to notice the gradual change, so the
farmer thought things were fine and kept decreasing the proportion of
oats. But weeks later, on the day he
finally fed the poor beast nothing but sawdust, the mule finished the meal…and then
fell over dead.
This story reminds me of
a high-powered non-practicing Catholic jewelry store executive who said, “I was
always looking for something and knew my life was empty. I had tried
self-hypnosis, Silva mind control, and TM [Transcendental Meditation]. I would
try the latest fads. I had everything but had nothing.”
He left the Catholic
faith on September 12, 1986, because of misplaced hopes about a drug deal. The
previous day he had met Jack Smith, a friend of three of his brothers, at a
party. Jack had noticed the jewelry store executive’s excessive drinking, so
Jack asked if the jewelry store executive would like to have the same high with
no side effects. The executive agreed to meet him the next day in Jack Smith’s
hotel room. He had no idea the presumed drug dealer was an evangelical
missionary. “I thought Jack had access to some new American drugs,” he said. “I
was shocked when I got to his room and saw him sitting with an open Bible on
the table.” Smith shared the Gospel, and after 20 minutes, the executive knelt
to receive Jesus into his heart. He notes, looking back, that he was ripe for
conversion. His wife, who also later accepted Christ, says they considered
themselves Catholic but didn’t take their faith seriously. “I hated confession,
and I had no personal walk with God,” she says.
Like the mule in the
story, all they were eating was sawdust, fed to them by their worldly lifestyle
full of self-seeking.
And now they had lost
the treasure of the true faith, the true religion.
Paul Thigpen has noted
that one is in danger of falling away from the Catholic faith if one has a loss
of love for God, the gift of fear of the Lord, loss of joy, aversion to the
Sacraments, prayer, Catholic fellowship, and private Scripture reading.
Joy is a feeling of
contentment that we get when we come into contact with something good, like the
Catholic faith.
The ex-non-practicing
Catholic jewelry executive later said, “I was mad at the priests because they
did not tell me about [the need for] a personal walk with God. The {Catholic] Mass
seemed an empty ritual to me.” Fortunately, his brothers did practice the
Catholic faith and started a local Catholic Answers branch to protect the faith
of local Catholics from evangelical missionaries.[i]
The design of the Liturgy
of the Hours is to help us meditate on the Psalms and selected Bible readings
and meditations for each day. According to
its instructions, we will find “the treasures of revelation and tradition.” These
contribute significantly to the spiritual life. “Bishops and priests should
prize these treasures.”
According to the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, “knowledge of revealed truth” is “deepened”
by “theological research” and by “the intimate sense of spiritual realities
which [believers] experience” (Catechism 94).
It is so important that
ordinary Catholics read Scripture as a devotional inquiry. The Catholic Catechism that this will lead us
to “the intimate sense of spiritual realities which believers experience.” That
sounds like an invitation to know Jesus personally for Catholics when they
read, meditate, and study the Bible.
The Catholic Answers
organization says, “We get questions all the time like, ‘What is the Catholic
position on this Scripture passage?’” They respond by saying that “many people
seem to have the idea that the Catholic Church has an official interpretation
of every passage of Scripture. It isn’t true. The Church has no official
commentary on Scripture. Only seven passages of Scripture have had their senses
partially (not entirely) defined by the official teaching church at the Council
of Trent. And when there is consensus by the early Church Fathers on a Bible
verse, the meaning of that verse can’t be contradicted by private
interpretation.
A catechism is an
excellent summary of the basics of the faith in a few hundred well-crafted
propositions. However, Sacred Scripture contains tens of thousands of
individual plans, and to comment on the authentic meaning of each of them would
swell the needed number of propositions into the hundreds of thousands or
millions. Plus, each Scripture passage can have more than one level of meaning --
the literal and the spiritual, and the spiritual meaning may contain up to
three different kinds of meanings. So that leaves 99% of the Bible undefined so
a Catholic can personally read and reflect on the Bible and even study it with
Catholic study bible, commentary book, or on-line course.
Action
It was a “joyous
sacrifice” to find the treasures mentioned in the parables we heard today in
the Gospel Reading.
For example, in “What
Happens After Saying Yes to God?” the author Casey Cole, OFM, admits that
living the Gospel—even to the point of saying “yes” to a religious vocation—can
be a real sacrifice.
However, Cole writes:
“There is too much emphasis on what we sacrifice to enter religious life. For
me, the vows are incredibly freeing. They set clear boundaries in my life so
that I can live and love without abandon within those boundaries.
Point taken. The
willingness to sacrifice is more important than the act of sacrifice itself,
which turns out not to be so big.
So how do you take
advantage of all the grace God wants to give to you and your loved ones? The
answer is in Reading the Bible devotionally and savoring the intimate sense of
spiritual realities which believers experience.
This daily practice will spare us of eating any amount of worldly
sawdust.
Amen.
[i] Source: Beverley, James A.
Source: Christianity Today, 48 no February 2, 2004, p 70-72.
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