This weekend we celebrate the feast day of St James the Greater, one of Jesus’ apostles. When I traveled to the country of Spain in the summer of 2003 to hike the pilgrimage route of St James, I had the opportunity to visit some other religious sites around the country of Spain. One of the most interesting places I visited was the city of Segovia, which is the city where St. John of Cross spent his last days and where he is buried. I also got to visit the home of the famous Spanish poet Antonio Machado in Segovia, which is now a museum. In this humble apartment, Machado wrote most of his well-known poems. One of Machado’s poems talks about the state of his soul. This is what Machado wrote:
One clear day the wind with the
aroma of jasmine called my heart:
( The wind said:) "In exchange for my aroma I'd love to
have the fragrance of all your roses."
(I replied:) " I have no roses, there aren't any
flowers in my garden; all have died."
(The wind then said:) " I will then take the fountain's waters,
the yellow leaves and the withered petals."
The wind left...My heart wailed....
" Soul, what have you done to your garden?"
As Machado writes, our soul can be a beautiful garden, with beautiful flowers and a sweet aroma. Or our soul be a garden where all the flowers have died and withered, where there is nothing be dead plants and parched ground.
There are a lot of things we can claim for our treasure in life, many, many things. In recent years, there have been reality TV shows that have addressed the issue of hoarding in our society, how some people accumulate material possessions to the extreme, to the extent that they accumulate so many stacks and piles of so many things that they barely even have space to move around in their homes.
Jesus’ parable today addresses the great treasures that people find in the lives – buried treasure in a field that is so wonderful that one is willing to sell everything in order to obtain it, or a pearl that a merchant finally finds after many years of searching. The point of all of these stories is that the kingdom of God is that treasure for us, far more valuable than anything we can obtain here on earth. Yet, we can be so caught up with our material treasures here on earth that nothing else matters. Some in our society are ready to sell their souls for the accumulation of material wealth and riches. Some of them may end up compromising their salvation for the sake of fame, or power, popularity or worldly success. That is the sentiment that Antonio Machado tried to capture in his poem. The Lord can come to us in a quiet whisper and a calm breeze with the good news of salvation, with a call for us to follow him that can be as subtle and as beautiful as the smell of jasmine blooming on a hot summer’s night. Yet, if we’ve neglected our faith, if the garden of our soul has not been cultivated, we might not be ready to receive his message, no matter how beautiful and inviting it may be.
When I was in Rome with the youth choir from St Richard Church in Jackson back in 2010, we visited St Paul’s basilica outside the ancient walls of Rome. For centuries, Church officials had tried to find the exact place where Paul’s tomb was located. One spot of ground was ruled out because it looked like it was solid rock, so they thought that there was no way Paul could have been buried on that spot. However, it turned out not to be rock, it was just soil that had been hardened for so long that it was hard as rock. This is the place where the treasure was eventually found, below that hard, hard soil, where the tomb of St. Paul was finally found a couple of decades ago. Just like soil that can become hard as a rock, our hearts can become so hard that we might not think that this is the place where we’ll find our treasure, so we start looking for treasure in other places. But Jesus tells us that we need to keep searching for the treasure that we will only find in God’s kingdom, for this is the only treasure that is worth such a great price.
The great Catholic writer Ron Rolheiser writes that there are many tragic ways to die in our world, but there are two ways that are most tragic of all. If we die without expressing the love we have in our hearts for God and for our brothers and sisters, or if we die without feeling the love that God has for us, without feeling the love of our brothers and sisters, that is the greatest tragedy of all. Indeed, God is love. And since we were made in the image of God, we are called to love, we are called to experience the love of others. May we keep searching, may we never give up until we find the treasure that awaits us in God’s kingdom, in God’s love.
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