Wednesday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time
The hidden mystery
“The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field, which a person finds and hides again, and out of joy goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant searching for fine pearls. When he finds a pearl of great price, he goes and sells all that he has and buys it. Mt 13,44-46
These two parables, of the hidden treasure and of the pearl of great price, cause me to think when, being a boy, I was used to go into the woods searching for mushrooms with my uncle Sante. The forest, with its endless hiding places and the life which secretly bustles, has always aroused in me a joyful sense of mystery, but the most exciting time was when I was going to search for mushrooms, in late summer. What most surprised me was the fact that the poisonous mushrooms and the less valuable ones were emerging clearly being visible and smiling from the ground, while the delicious mushrooms were always covered by the shrubs of the undergrowth, under the first fallen leaves of the autumn. One day I asked my uncle Sante, who was a lumberjack as per his job, why this happened and he replied: “The mushrooms are like the people, the best is always hidden”. The wisdom of that response, combined with the charm of going to search for mushrooms, has always caused me to locate the mystery of the forest close to that of the life: all which glitters and is most visible, hides what is the nothing, meanwhile what is truly valuable is always hidden, like the treasure and the pearl of the passage today. They symbolize the Lord of the life, who went on to become incarnated in the humanity of Jesus of Nazareth. But also they remember the joy which we discover in giving rather than receiving and the sense of the existence which lies in the poverty of spirit, rather than in the wealth; in the forgiveness instead than in the revenge; in the meekness instead than in the power; in the humility instead than in the pride; in the dying to ourselves instead than in the success. To discover these treasures it is necessary to sell everything, it is needed to give up what we are to become another person. It is necessary to convert ourselves.