Some of Jesus' parables tell us exactly how much his wisdom is worth and what it costs, what it costs us.
He tells of a merchant looking for fine pearls. The meaning of the
pearl might have been obvious even to Jesus' disciples, who often got
things wrong. Job had said that the price of wisdom was beyond pearls.
This parable is about the discovery of the most precious wisdom of all,
the wisdom of Jesus that leads us to God.
Now the merchant's reaction might not be at all what a real merchant would have done: selling everything
he owned to obtain this one pearl. That seems a little ridiculous, but
it's the ridiculous detail in Jesus' story that drives the point home:
Christ's wisdom is beyond the price of pearls and it is worth more than
everything you have. The merchant may seem foolish - but the wisdom of
God does appear foolish in the eyes of the world, and it demands the
greatest commitment - everything we have once and for all for our whole
lives.
But can we be comfortable with that? Such a commitment of a whole life now – of an unknown future, leaving nothing back - complete
self-giving - is that even possible for us? A lot of life today is
short-term, not long-term, or at least that's how we have come to find
our world. We know that commitments in general no longer seem to be the
lifelong commitments they once were – people make a commitment but then
move on for one reason or another to something else. All of this can
affect the way we see the whole of life.
Our lives simply no longer seem to have
the unity and stability they perhaps once had. Even when economic times
were better than they are today, just envisioning one career
for the whole of working life had become more difficult for young
people. People seem less able to grasp their whole lives ahead of them
as having a kind of unity, as being a single continuing story of a
single life. Their perceptions can also sometimes be shaped by an idea
of the endless possibilities of continually reinventing yourself.
At the bottom of much of this lies the
modern obsession with choice, the idea that choice somehow guarantees
freedom and quality of life. But while career changes and new directions
are often liberating, to make having choices so central to our
idea of the good life is surely more double-edged. Along with making
freedom of choice so central, there often goes unease about commitment,
because if you make a commitment you limit your options. Making a
committed choice seems to lessen your freedom, and sometimes people
experience a tendency to put off the key decisions and commitments that
somehow make our identities. We sometimes just like to keep our options
open.
So there's the crucial question: is it
possible in a world like this, even to commit oneself to following
Christ as a baptised Christian? Do we think of this commitment as
opening us up to the fulfillment of our lives, or as just another way of
limiting our options? People can be surprised at the idea that you
might commit yourself once and for all just to being at Mass every
Sunday for the rest of your life. It might seem the more obvious thing
to make a separate decision whether to go to Mass each Sunday instead,
keeping your options open.
So does obsession with choice and
keeping options open prevent us from selling everything we have and
obtaining the pearl? Does the pearl cost us more in today's world than
it did in the past? Though it may be difficult, divine grace means
commitment is never impossible, and our human nature still makes us need
it. In reality, only Christian commitment can give our lives the unity
and stability they need by making them part of God's one story. Only
Christian commitment can fully open up for us the fulfillment that truly
makes us happy and free, a heavenly happiness and freedom that last
forever and can never be lost.
So let us affirm our choice of this
pearl once and for all, a choice made with everything we have, with all
we are, and all we will be. And may God who has begun this work in us
bring it by his grace to its completion. (Simon Francis Gaine O.P.torch.op.org)
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