St Mary's

We have heard 2 parables which speak of finding in order to discover this Kingdom of God. I want to share a parable about losing to find the Kingdom of God.

There was once a rich and powerful emperor who was looking out from his balcony and spied a poor beggar at the palace gates who was attracting a crowd every day- the crowd got larger with each passing day. This fascinated the emperor, so one day he left his balcony and took a vantage place closer to the beggar to get a better look at why people gathered around him. Still unsure at what the crowd was fascinated by, he approached the beggar and asked him. The beggar told him about his magic bowl which could never be filled. “That’s ridiculous”, replied the emperor, “of course it can be filled.”

With that he removed his bracelet which disappeared into the bowl. Amazed, he then placed into the bowl his gold chain, it disappeared, his beautiful robes and shoes, which also disappeared into the bowl. “This cannot be” said the emperor. “I can fill this bowl. I am the richest emperor in all this part of the world. I will fill it”. He ordered his guards to bring item after item from the palace, but he could not fill it. When finally all he owned had disappeared into the bowl, the emperor in exasperation asked “What’s with this bowl? How does this happen?”

“This bowl” said the beggar “is the Bowl of Separation”.

Like this bowl, when we live our lives in Separation from the ground of our being, from Beingness, wholeness, God, we can never be satisfied, we will always be searching, desiring to be filled, fulfilled.

The people in tonight’s Gospel parables find this treasure, as Jesus described it, this pearl of great price, this Kingdom of God, this consciousness, this state of being, where there is no separation, where what they were really looking for is found.

And once found, it is worth giving everything for it; for this is what we truly seek. It is beyond separation. Here we are whole with our essence, one with Being itself. The self drops away, that’s the getting everything we own, everything we are; that’s the dying to self which the gospels speak of.

The chief symbol of Christianity, the cross is the symbol of death – death to the self, the selling of all for the pearl of great price.

St Augustine writes beautifully about this finding.

“Late have I loved you, O Beauty, so ancient and so new, late have I loved you”…” You called and cried out to me and broke my deafness; you shone forth upon me and you scattered my blindness; you breathed fragrance, and I draw in my breath and I now pant for you; I tasted and I hunger and thirst; you touched me and I burned for your peace.” (St Augustine “The Confessions”#27)

The selling all for St Augustine came late, a sense that all had gone before was wasted time and energy – all the seeking in the wrong places.

He speaks of a new seeing “you scattered my blindness”.

A clearer understanding of life that makes sense of everything. He discovered the true meaning of the word “Religion” from the Anglo-Norman word “religion” to “bind back” – it happens whenever you connect the parts with the whole, whenever you find the centre point that holds together everything else.

The finding has nothing to do with the world of form, the material, external world; it has nothing to do with pearls, or treasure, but the antithesis of this world. This world, the world of form, can cloud the finding, a bit like having our hands over our face.

The more we are immersed in and attached to this world, the more clouded our vision, our seeing. The world of our points of view, our thoughts, our belief structures, our job, career, my house, my family – ego stuff.

The invitation is to keep dropping the hands, to move into being one with; into wholeness, to wake up from the dream world of separateness, to put on, as St Paul invites, the mind of Christ – to move out of our small worlds and clouded seeing and hearings.

Yesterday, myself and Peter had the good fortune of meeting Philip Pinto, the congregational head of the Christian Brothers internationally, a wonderful man – a prophet. He shared with us personally about his life and the influence of his Persian mother who instilled a love for oneness of life, and for the mystical traditions of the Persians; the enlightened poets Hafiz and Rumi. Here is a quote from Rumi: The Persian Mystic Rumi asked, “You were born with wings. Why prefer to crawl through life?”

And again “Why, when God has given you this wide and wonderful world, do you choose to live in a prison of all places?” – The prison of a separated and separate self.