REFLECTION FOR THE FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT

An Irish professor who taught me at St John Vianney seminary in Pretoria, loved referring to Mrs Thatcher as “Margherita speciosa.” This phrase, which is Latin for “the pearl of great price,” refers to the parable found in Luke’s Gospel about the merchant who finds a pearl so precious that he is prepared to sell everything that he owns in order to possess it. It echoes strongly Jesus’ saying, “Store up treasures for yourself in heaven…for where your treasure is, there will your heart be.”

It is in such terms that Paul refers to Jesus Christ. Take a careful look at the language he uses in today’s Second Reading from his letter to the Church at Philippi: “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things (how like the merchant this sounds), and count them as refuse (literally, dung) in order that I may gain Christ…” In Paul, even the pearl of great price pales into insignificance next to the knowledge of Jesus Christ. Paul, before his conversion, was a rabbi, and the strictest of rabbis. “As far as the Law is concerned, I was perfect,” he says of the punctilious way in which he observed every one of its decrees. But the Law was a series of regulations. Its aim, according to the Book of Leviticus, was, in God’s words, for his people to “be holy, as I, the Lord your God, am holy.”

But Paul became convinced that, while the Law could say what was right and what was wrong, it did not have the power to make us holy. This had to be done by the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, who “takes away the sin of the world.” And Paul speaks very much, not of knowing about, but of knowing personally, the Lord Jesus. He speaks of being “in Christ,” a personal relationship of the closest kind. We are reminded of Peter’s first sermon, when he says of Jesus, “There is no other name in heaven or on earth by which we can be saved.” For Paul, Jesus is everything, and as in the case of the merchant and the pearl of great price, there is nothing more precious than Jesus, for whom Paul has “accepted the loss of everything.”

How precious is Jesus to you? If, as Peter tells us, “There is no other name in heaven or on earth by which we can be saved,” then are you able to accept the loss of everything if only you can have Christ? Is there anything you would not be prepared to lose if only you can have Jesus Christ? These are big and important questions to be answered as we draw close to our celebration of his suffering and death during Holy Week and Easter. For us, Jesus accepted the loss of everything on the cross. Are we prepared to do the same in order to gain him – for ever?

Fr Phillip.