Have you ever had the experience of seeing someone’s life and thinking to yourself, “Wow. It would be amazing to have that life?” You and I are hard-wired to be able to recognize goodness and beauty, and we long for it. Maybe you’ve seen other people’s loving relationships, where a married couple or even a whole family love and cherish each other well, and every person in the family is so well cared-for. Maybe you’ve noticed the virtues and delightful spirit of another person, and you just want to draw close to them so that their goodness might overflow into you and make you a better version of yourself. Perhaps you’ve even said: “I would give anything… I would give anything to have that life, to have those relationships, to belong to someone like that. I would give anything…”
Just as we have all had these experiences of desiring the good we see in others, I pray that we have all also had experiences of being welcomed in to share in the lives of other people through friendship, through dating and marriage, maybe even through adoption. We are made to live in ongoing exchanges of relationship with other people, both receiving and giving the kind of love that shapes who we are and fills our lives with meaning and purpose.
I mention all of this because this is precisely what our Gospel reading today is about. The “treasure” and the “pearl” in these parables represent God’s own blessed life, which He is inviting you and I to enter into. The eternal exchange of love that goes on between the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit for all eternity is breathtaking and beautiful beyond our wildest imaginings. Whether we realize it yet or not, the inner life of God is what we long for above all else. We are made for perfect love, unending relationship, and infinite joy, and we are not satisfied until we find this kind of life. This is precisely the life of the Trinity that you and I made to share in.
God has hidden Himself in the field of this world, not so that we would not find Him, but precisely so that we can find Him. When a parent plays hide-and-seek with his or her child, the parent does not do so in order that the child would not find him or her; but rather the parent hides in order for the child to have the delight of finding them. The “pearl of great price” is the Person of Jesus Christ: all of divinity packed into a tiny human form. And now that pearl of great price is the Eucharist: Jesus’ body, blood, soul, and divinity packed into a small white host. Jesus’ death and resurrection are how you and I are able to enter into the family of the Trinity, and the sacraments are our access points. The sacraments are God’s hidden presence which, when we find them, open up for us the blessed life of the Trinity.
Living the Christian life, coming to Mass week after week, is not simply about checking off the things we need to do in order to avoid going to hell when we die! All of this—the Mass, the Church, the Bible, Confession, prayer—all of it is about living life with God here and now, a life of communion with the Trinity that will simply continue for us after death, although magnified to a blissful degree. You don’t have to wait for heaven to start sharing in the life of perfect love and communion that you are made for! God has already planted Himself within our world in order for us to find Him and start living that life now.
When you begin really searching for God with the kind of energy and determination which fueled the man searching for treasure in the field and the man searching for the pearl in the marketplace, you discover that God has already been searching for you. “God searches for man by hiding himself in the world and allowing man to find him. That is part of God’s condescension with us—letting us think that it is we who do the searching… When I believe I have ‘found God,’ the deeper truth of the matter is that I am at long last becoming aware that I have long since been found by God.”[1]
Stop living a checkbox Christianity of simply trying to avoid hell. With every fiber of your being and power of your soul, spend your life on this search for the blessed life of God that you are made for, and look for Him in the places where He Himself has said that He will be found, most especially in His Church. To God, you are the pearl of great price. You are the treasure hidden in the field of the world for which He sold everything—pouring out every last drop of His blood on the Cross—in order to buy you back. Do not be afraid to sell all that you have—to give up every worldly priority and vain distraction that would keep you away from knowing and loving God.
“Wow, it would be amazing to have that life, the perfect and blissful life of love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” Well, my dear Christian, it is yours to have, yours to live. Will you give up anything and everything in order have it? “While renunciation for its own sake is the perversity of a sick mind, renunciation of the lower for the sake of the higher, and of the many for the sake of the one, can only be called wisdom.”[2] Come and receive this life that you are made for. It begins here and now.
[1] Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word: Meditations on the Gospel According to Matthew, Volume II.
[2] Ibid.
Total Surrender 
Great,Inspiring, uplifting, challenging, thought provoking… you should put them together in a book entitled: For the Heart Who Aches For His Master!!!
Loved your writing! Keep it up Fr. Dalton 🙏
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