I have an affection
for pearls. I celebrated my
twentieth birthday in Hong Kong with my parents and my mother’s desire, her “
treasure”, was a strand of Mikimoto pearls. We soon discovered that you don’t
choose a strand from a case. You
select each pearl one by one and then watch as it is slipped onto a fine silk
thread. I knew these would eventually
be mine so I was keenly engaged.
Eighty beautiful pearls. I wore the strand on my wedding day and
eventually they passed to me. I wear them often and find myself fingering their
smoothness much as I do the beads of my rosary.
In Matthew’s Gospel today Jesus speaks of the treasure in
the field and the merchant finding the pearl of great price, using the emphasis
of incomparable value as characteristic
of the Kingdom, the question of What is
the treasure or pearl. But I believe the question here is Who is our treasure or pearl.
This past week
we celebrated the Feast of St. Mary Magdalene, the apostle to the apostles. In
the first reading from the Song of Songs (3:1-4b) the bride seeks her “pearl”, whom her heart loves. At first she seeks
but does not find, but she perseveres through the streets of the city even to
the point of asking those who patrol the streets, “have you seen him whom my heart loves?” She will go the extreme to
be in relationship with Him, a clear illustration of this gospel text…. not the
What but the Who. God is wooing her and us as
His Beloved to be in the most intimate relationship. That is the most valuable
treasure/pearl.
As of late I have come to see this strand of pearls as my
own seeking through the city streets.
Each pearl a step toward that relationship “with the one whom my heart
loves”. As the ends come together
and the clasp is fastened, there in that completion is the unity with the Beloved
and the Lover, the finding of “ the pearl”. Him whom my heart loves.
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