The Pearl of Great Price

photo from the Bridgemaker

In this Sea­son of Lent, it might be good to stop and think about our lives and where it is headed. Here is some­thing I wrote and gave as a homily a life­time ago, when I was young and full of hope. hehe. But this is some­thing that weirdly rings even more true for me today than when I was a Jesuit. Maybe because I have to ask myself over and over again, dur­ing quiet moments alone in my room: What does it profit a man if he gains his soul and suf­fers the loss of the world? Or the other way around: What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and suf­fer the loss of his soul?

This is more true today as I make a major deci­sion in my life that will allow me to gain the world but might lead me to suf­fer the loss of my soul. Pray for me please. :-)

The Pearl of Great Price

I am sure you have heard lines like we have in our gospel today a lot dur­ing the past weeks. One trans­la­tion of the line goes, “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and suf­fers the loss of his soul…”

This was sup­posed to be the words Ignatius told Fran­cis Xavier that led to Xavier’s con­ver­sion. And in a sense, this is some­thing we have all inter­nal­ized and made true for our­selves when we entered the Soci­ety or even when we just begun our jour­ney in the Pren­ovi­tiate. “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and suf­fers the loss of his soul?” I would ven­ture to say that we believe this in one way or another, or we wouldn’t be here.

I’d like to take a slightly dif­fer­ent tan­gent on this, this morn­ing. What does it profit a man if he gains his soul and suf­fers the loss of the world? At this stage in our for­ma­tion, just after the Novi­tiate, I believe this is a worth­while thing to ask our­selves. Yes, what does it profit us if we gain our souls and suf­fer the loss of the world?

For the Juniors who have just trans­ferred from the Novi­tiate, for the Philoso­phers who go to class at the Ate­neo every­day, we are just real­iz­ing what we have lost. Of course we know this in the­ory from the Novi­tiate. But it becomes more real here when friends invite us for par­ties and we can’t go because we have a rec­ol­lec­tion, or when we can not go home on Christ­mas because there is VocProm work to do, when we can’t splurge because we only have a P600 allowance, or when we have to eat salt­less food in the refec­tory every­day! Good thing a for­mer Pres­i­dent sends corned beef once in a while. The point is made: we have suf­fered the loss of the world in one way or another: careers given up, dreams relin­quished, love lives renounced, sex abandoned.

And what indeed, does it profit us?

In a famil­iar para­ble that we all know, Jesus tells the story of a mer­chant, search­ing for fine pearls, and locat­ing one pearl of espe­cially great value. When he had found this pearl of great price, he went and sold every­thing he had to get money to buy the pearl. And we ask our­selves: why? We really do not know what he had in mind. Per­haps he just wanted the honor of own­ing the pearl. Per­haps he wanted to give the pearl to the woman he loves. What­ever his rea­son, he acted quickly. He sold every­thing he had so that he might buy the pearl of great price.

When Jesus told this story and many oth­ers, he started each with the words, “The king­dom of heaven is like.…” — like trea­sure hid­den in a field or like a mus­tard seed… or “The king­dom of heaven is like a mer­chant in search of fine pearls.”

He was telling us that the king­dom of heaven is — like the buried trea­sure or the pearl — some­thing worth any sac­ri­fice. For Ignatius, when we are part of the king­dom, it means God is our king. When we are cit­i­zens of the king­dom, we are on God’s side, fight­ing by His stan­dard. When we are cit­i­zens of the king­dom, the king becomes our pro­tec­tor and our provider. The Fil­ipino word for it is “res­bak”. When God is our King, He has our backs.

So what is that worth? Jesus is pre­cisely telling us that it is worth every­thing. He tells us that get­ting our souls right with God is worth every­thing we have or ever will have. He tells us that our rela­tion­ship with God is so pre­cious that it is worth sac­ri­fic­ing every­thing to attain it.

Except that he doesn’t use the word sac­ri­fice. He uses the word JOY! He says of the man who finds the trea­sure in the field that “in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” And in his joy of find­ing the pearl of great price, he sells every­thing he has and buys the pearl.

The apos­tle Paul under­stood this. He said:

“What­ever gains I had,
these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.…
For his sake I have suf­fered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rub­bish,
in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him…” (Phil 3:7–9).

It’s like an 18-year-old kid who found a nearly-new BMW Z3 or a Red Fer­rari for just P500,000. He finds a way to get his hands on the money. P500,000 — noth­ing! All the money that he has saved — noth­ing! Doing chores around the house for the next five years — noth­ing! A six-year bank-loan — noth­ing! A Fer­rari! BEYOND PRICE!

And I guess in one way or another we all believe that about this God we have cho­sen to fol­low. Beyond price! We believe this or we wouldn’t be here. Price­less. Careers given up — noth­ing! Dreams relin­quished — noth­ing! Love lives renounced — noth­ing! Sex aban­doned, uhm… Noth­ing! The pearl of great price. Beyond price. Priceless.

What does it profit a man if he gains his soul and suf­fers the loss of the world?

Every­thing.