A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Jesus said to the crowds, the reign of God is like a buried treasure which a man found in a field. The man hid it again and rejoicing at his find, went and sold everything that he had and then bought that field. Or again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant's search for fine pearls. When he found a pearl really valuable, he went back and put up for sale everything that he had and then bought that pearl.
This is the gospel of the lord. Praise to you, lord. The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. God is my refuge in the day of distress, and that's the way he wants it to be. After all, our blessed lord said, come to me all you who labor and are heavy burdened, and I will refresh you.
It may not be the highest of motives, but our lord didn't spurn it. He didn't discard it. He didn't reject it. He didn't disown it. He commanded us.
He says, come to me all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will refresh There is no reason to be embarrassed or ashamed to go to God when we need him. When we even if they even if we've tried everything else as the hound of heaven theme and found nothing that would satisfy, and at last we say, well, God, I've tried everything that I can think of, and you're my last resort, so we'll we'll try you. See, that may that may be at the bottom of the barrel as far as idealistic motivation is concerned, but Jesus Christ did not spurn it. You hear a good bit of acrimony thrown at what is called foxhole religion, but our blessed lord did. He said when you when the when you've tried everything and nothing has succeeded, well then come to me.
Now, this is a complicated picture. Just yesterday I received a letter from a friend, an old friend who lost her husband just within months, who I suppose believes in God, but has certainly not been a religious person nor a churchgoing person. And she wrote that she has tried the congregational church in the place she lives quite away from here and and didn't find much consolation in it. Now here's a problem. Christ said, you know, if anything you pray for, you'll get.
He said that. He said if you pray to move that blooming mountain, it'll move. Have you ever tried it and move mountains? It doesn't seem to work at times. At other times it does seem to work.
There are plenty of people who say, I've had some very startling experiences about what seems to be the validity of prayer, that it does work. So if you bring the pragmatic test to this, you can come up with answers that are self contradictory. But the point I think we are missing is this. You see, it's alright to begin with going to God when there's no place else to go. Foxhole religion is not to be spurned.
When I am desperate, today Jeremiah cries out and says, woe is me that my mother even gave me birth. Now you can't get more desolate than that, than you wish you had not been born. And yet people sink to that level. Actually, actually, this is not theoretical. Life can be terribly difficult.
And people, plenty of people cry out, I wish I'd never been born, and they mean it. And if you look at their record, they have reason to say so. So let's face up to the facts of the matter. You but but you see that we've got to get ourselves straightened out. It's alright to go to God because you need him, because you're sad, because you're desperate, because you're almost in despair, because you need help, because you have no place else to go, nothing else has worked.
You've tried it and they failed you. And the hound of heaven is the best thing that's ever been written on this subject, much more in a sense than the book of Job. Now when you've tried all of this thing and you go to God and say, God, here I am. Help me. Well, now you face what?
What do you face? Cai Staple Lewis more than once said, when you say, God loves me, you better watch out what you're saying. Because you see, he does love you. God does love us, and he wants us to come to him when we need help. But there's a price.
There's a price. You want that fine pearl? Well, you're going to have to buy it. What with? With lesser pearls.
Those pearls don't lose their value because you sell them. Matter of fact, they become very valuable because they become extremely valuable relative to something you want more than than you want them. So you're not disparaging the pearls you have when you sell them to buy the pearl that you want above all other pearls. But you can't have it all. You can't have them all.
If you want the pearl of great price, you've got to be willing to separate yourself from the pearls of lesser price. That is what you've got to be prepared to do. And this is what our lord has said time and again. So that you see, what we have to realize is that our first obligation in prayer, that's what we're talking about, remember, or worship, and they are synonymous. Unless you talk about the prayer petition as if that were the only kind of prayer.
And, of course, that's what some people think, and that is probably the first definition of prayer that you'll get in a in a dictionary. It's the it's petition. It's to ask for something. But you see, take the let's go back to what Jesus Christ said about prayer and worship. How does it go?
He said, when you pray, pray this way. See, we we're not lost. As I say, Christianity, Catholicism may be complex. I'm the first one to agree to that. But it's not that all complex.
Here's a good lady who is who's who's who wants to pray because she needs help. There's nothing wrong with that. It's not the best, but there's nothing wrong with it. Now she's having problems with prayer. She said, I'd like to pray, but I can't.
My sister's good at it, but I'm no good at it. What does she mean? All she has to do is to open up her New Testament and say, well, if she believes then, I don't know. But the point is, if you if you're a Christian, then there's you might just as well say I'll do what Christ said. That sounds kind of logical.
And if you're talking about prayer, it's very simple. What did he tell you? What did he tell you about the pearls? What did he tell you about the the the treasure in the field? What that if you want that treasure, you'll have to sacrifice you'll have to separate yourself from the lesser treasures.
So how did Christ say? He said when you pray, pray this way. That simple. And what how does he say? Our father who art in heaven.
Now you see how different that is from the twentieth century where in the last especially in the seventies, we have elevated the the ego. Just think of course, there's a long background. Freud comes into it in a lot of things. But just think how the self in the seventies was elevated. We call it the imperial self.
The self became the test of everything. Do you go to mass on Sunday? No, I don't go to mass on Sunday. Why don't you go to mass on Sunday? I don't get anything out of it.
I don't get anything out of it. So the test of whether you're supposed to go to mass or not or worship God on Sunday is whether you feel good about it. Husband and wife, we don't want to be married anymore. Why don't you want to be married anymore? Because we are not being fulfilled.
Priests, not so I'm talking about the seventies. Why do you wanna leave the priesthood? I am not being fulfilled. I, I, I, the imperial self. When you pray, said our lord, pray this way, our father who art in heaven.
See the difference, god comes first. God, not self, not even the imperial self of the seventies. Of course, the self has always been imperial, more or less. It's just a got going bigger in the seventies. The test of everything is me.
Just not long within days, I got into a little discussion, and it was a matter of truth, as we say. And the final thing that came from my adversary was, that's the way I feel about it, and that's the way it is. Can you imagine such a jump as that from what how I feel about something to saying that's how it is? The imperial self, the standard of everything. But that's not the way we pray.
When you pray, you go to God. When God said when our Lord said, come to me all you who labor in a heavenly burden, what did he tell you? Leave all of these things that you've tried and have not worked. You've sought for consolation and you didn't get it. Those things are pearls because they're good, but there's nothing wrong with a good pearl.
There's nothing wrong with a good string around your neck of pearls. The point is this, when Christ said come to me all you who labor in a heavenly burden, you're going to separate yourself from something if you go to him. You can't have it both ways. But here is the great paradox. Our blessed lord said that if you try to find yourself, you'll lose yourself.
And if you seek yourself in him, you will find yourself. Now don't ask me to make sense out of that. It only makes sense as Christ makes sense, and his sense is not of this world. The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit.