Seventeenth Sunday - 2017

You may be familiar with a recent news report of a woman who bought a zippered bag with inscription, “Moon Rocks” on it. It was mistakenly put up for sale, online, by the US Space agency, NASA, thinking it was an unused artifact from the “Moon Walk” days. Turns out it was actually the very bag Neil Armstrong used to bring back moon rocks from the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing. The woman had paid $995.00 for it. Realizing their mistake, NASA went to court to try to get it back but were unsuccessful. The woman eventually auctioned it off through Sotheby’s for 1.8 million dollars. And there is that report this past May of a valuable painting by the Canadian folk artist, Maud Lewis, discovered at the New Hamburg Thrift Centre, run by the Mennonite Central Committee of Ontario. It was sold at auction for $45,000.00. Here you have a couple of examples of “Pearls of Great Price” being discovered and making someone very rich. Actually, it is quite common for people to head out on a Saturday or Sunday morning to go hunting through garage sales and flee markets, looking for one of those “pearls of great price”.  And some of those folks may walk right past a church, with its doors wide open in welcome, not realizing that inside that church there is a “True Pearl of Great Price” – the one Jesus is referring to in today’s gospel, the Pearl that can be had at no cost and who's value cannot be calculated.  But you are here today because you have discovered that Prize of all prizes – it is right here at this Eucharistic table. Here you have found Jesus, and are building a personnel relationship with Him, as He gives Himself to you in this sacrament; bringing you the gift of Salvation and Eternal Life. But this “Pearl of Great Price” must be carefully guarded, for we must never forget that there is a Thief on the prowl, everywhere today, seeking to steal away our Precious Gift – and many today have lost their “Pearl of Great Price” to his thievery and deceit. That safe place, where we keep our gift secure, is to be found in the practice of daily, personal prayer, together with a strong bond of ecclesial union within parish life. Alone, we are no match for the Master Thief. Only here, in the Body of Christ, are we safe. You may get an invitation from a friend, some Sunday, to join them on a garage sale/flee market hunt. And you may like to join them. But you, in turn, might also invite them to join you on your Sunday visit here, in this House of Treasures, where they too might find the Pearl of Great Price.