17th Sunday 2023
1 Kings 3:5,7-12; Romans 8:28-30; Matthew 13:44-52.
What price the Kingdom? The late Fr. John Dalrymple gave his 1975 book, subtitled “Notes on holiness today” the title “Costing not less than everything”, a phrase borrowed from the Anglo-American poet TS Eliot.
Our search for the Kingdom, which might equally be labelled our desire to fulfil God’s will, demands our whole self, our whole being. The treasure hunter and the pearl seeker of today’s two parables sell everything they own in order to acquire the object of their desire, and that, implies Jesus, should be our attitude to following Him. It should cost us not less than everything.
What does that mean in practice? Are we to give away all our possessions like St. Anthony of Egypt, the greatest of the Desert Fathers, who divested himself of all his belongings, to live the life of a hermit? Some people may be called to such a way of life, but if all of us did the same, society would collapse.
Are we then to practise great austerities, abandoning all luxuries, treating our bodies harshly? St. Francis of Assisi took that approach, calling his body “Brother Ass” and subjecting it to all manner of hardship. That risks damaging our God-given health, and despising the body which is itself a gift from God, and which should therefore be treated with respect. We should not regard our body as the be all and end all, seeking the perfect body or, on the other hand, giving in to every bodily desire, but a degree of reverence is demanded towards something which is a gift from God.
Perhaps, then, we are to subdue our bodily appetites, saying “no” to every pleasure? We need to be in control of our appetites, certainly, recognising that to give in to every desire will prove destructive both to ourselves and to others, but we know that absolute self-denial creates curmudgeonly, miserable, harsh and cruel people, lacking in affection and empathy, the sort of people who chain up children’s swings on the Sabbath, or who tear babies away from unmarried mothers.
How then are we to seek the Kingdom after the manner of those single-minded searchers in the parables? How are we to interpret the words “Costing not less than everything”?
Is it, perhaps, much simpler, much more straightforward than we realise? Does it, in reality, come down to attempting to live out as fully as possible those two commandments which Our Lord defined as the greatest, the most fundamental of all; namely, to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love our neighbour as ourselves? (And bear in mind that, if we do regard ourselves with contempt, our love of neighbour will amount to very little.)
If we practise it genuinely, there is nothing more costly than love. Ask anyone who has lost a loved one: ask yourself about your own bereavements. To love God entails wanting to do His will in everything: to love our neighbour is to live compassionately, in the literal sense of cum passio—suffering with—walking in our neighbour’s shoes, wearing his or her skin. If we are doing our best in both of those interrelated areas, we will soon discover the cost. To quote another poet Oscar Wilde: “He who lives more lives than one, more deaths than one must die”. Genuine love brings us to death many, many times.
What though of today’s third parable, the fish caught in the dragnet? That complements last week’s account of the wheat and the weeds. If we are not willing to attempt to fulfil the two great commandments, then we shall be the weeds, we shall be the sprats. There is, however, one major difference: whereas darnel cannot become wheat, or sprats turn into mackerel, we can, by the grace of God, be changed from negative into positive, from uncaring to compassionate, from outsiders to children of the Kingdom—but it will cost.
