The thrill of faith

Today’s readings: 1 Kings 3, 5.7-12; Romans 8, 28-30; Matthew 13, 44-52.

To the most important people in the Bible and when dealing with the most difficult of commissions, God always appears and speaks in dreams, as He does today with Solomon on his succession to David as king. The significance of this is profoundly theological because, contrary to the way we normally expect things to unfold, and as Paul reminds us in his letter to Romans, “God co-operates with all those who love Him”.

So it is God who co-operates with us, as long as there is love. What is then this love? It is the thrill of faith, the spark within that gives us a fresh and new perspective on things as they unfold and in the manner they affect our lives. It is the flame that keeps us going, that injects enthusiasm, that gives us always something to look forward to.

I think one of the worst deficiencies in the way we propose the faith to the present generation is precisely that there is little exploration in believing. God is basically a profound adventure, not the supreme being depicted as standing aloof out there, very demanding and rigid.

We need to get more used to the idea of journey, pilgrimage, risk, and exploration where faith and belief are concerned.

Strictly speaking, the hidden treasure or the fine pearls about which Jesus speaks in the Gospel are not referring to faith in itself. In his way of speaking throughout the entire Gospel, Jesus makes it evident that his major concern is life in its fullness, that we make the best out of life as it comes across.

It is life in itself that is risky, adventurous, explorative and in search of that added value that makes it complete. The hidden treasure in the field and the fine pearls on sale stand for this added value to life. Jesus all the time speaks in terms of happiness, wholeness, inner fulfilment and peace. His words sound almost as marked with a fabled sense of awe and astonishment.

Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician and Catholic philosopher of the 17th century, spoke of a wager which became so much associated with his name. Pascal’s wager is addressed to non-believers, to those who are sceptical of both theoretical reason and revelation.

As Peter Kreeft put it in his book on Pascal’s pensées, Christianity for Modern Pagans, “we all start in a pit; but some are not even interested in investigating whether or not there is a way out of the darkness into the light of the sun, and others already have climbed out by the ladder of reason or the ladder of faith”.

For those still in the pit but eager to escape, Pascal proposes that it can be eminently reasonable to bet on God. Normally, before buying something, we go to the price list so that we know for sure what we are buying, what we are paying for it, and hence its worth.

The hidden treasure is hidden. It is buried. It has to be unearthed. It is only when unearthed that we go and sell everything to buy the field. Francis of Assisi did precisely that, and continues to be a case in point in the Church’s history of how to experience perfect joy in life.

The treasure hidden in the field is the signal that waits to be decoded. It is not something you sell everything to acquire.

What we need to acquire is the field, the sacred space we start to explore only once we enter.

The thrill only starts there and it’s all about exploring, deepening, understanding, for which the major, if not only, requisite is what Solomon asked for and was given: “a heart wise and shrewd”. It is that wisdom that gives us discernment so that, as Jesus says in the Gospel, from scribes we become disciples of the kingdom.

The scribe is someone who remains stuck in the letter of the word, in the laws and rules, in the old frame of mind that is enslaving, not liberating. We live in times when the faith acquired through learning does not suffice.

The leap that makes us disciples is the important threshold that puts us on the track of Jesus Christ to discover the hidden treasure and unveil the inner secrets of daily living.