Bishop Barron's Sunday sermon on the parables of the treasure and the pearl of great price
Bishop Robert Barron delivers a Sunday sermon on Matthew 13, focusing on the parables of the buried treasure and the pearl of great price.
Summary
Bishop Barron preaches on the final parables of Matthew 13, using the images of a buried treasure and a pearl of great price to explore the concept of the summum bonum — the highest good — and how rightly ordering one's life toward it is the central task of the spiritual life. Drawing on Pascal and Kierkegaard, he outlines three ascending levels of value: the goods of the body, the goods of the mind, and the goods of the heart — with God alone constituting the true summum bonum. He argues that the central tragedy of human life, as Augustine identified it, is mistaking a creature for the Creator, and that all spiritual and psychological suffering follows from that single error. The sermon concludes with the call to relativize every other good once the highest good has been found.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction to the parables of Matthew 13
Bishop Barron: Peace be with you. Friends, we come to the 17th Sunday of Ordinary Time and we're going to finish our reading of the 13th chapter of Matthew's Gospel — that great chapter dealing with the parables. And the ones we hear today are so fine. As I mentioned last week, there's a tendency to write the parables off as nice little stories with a moral, kind of charming. No. The parables are cutting to the heart of the matter. In many ways, it's Jesus' preferred way of conveying the truths of the kingdom. And these are really good examples. The ones today are all about the summum bonum — the highest good — and therefore they're about what's most fundamental in the spiritual life.
You could argue the entire Bible is about this theme. I've said the master theme of the Bible is right worship. And that's the same thing — you worship what you think is of highest good, highest value. The summum bonum. So what is that, and how do you get your lives ordered to it? That makes all the difference. That's what these parables are about.
The parables of the treasure and the pearl
So the first one: "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." It's a vivid image. In the ancient world, before insurance companies and all that, when people left for whatever reason — maybe there was an enemy army coming — they would sometimes bury their valuables in a field, hoping that eventually they'd come back and recover them. Then, who knows, they were killed or distracted and never came back. That treasure remained buried in the field until, perhaps many years later, a farmer comes along plowing and comes across it. That's the image here. Something you come upon suddenly, and you realize: this is of enormous value. In fact, of such great value that you're going to sell everything you have to buy that field.
Or: "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."
Everybody, this is life. This is what it's about. Can you muster the capacity in your life to say: now that I've found the summum bonum, the highest good, the pearl, the treasure, I'm willing to sacrifice — or relativize, or set aside — everything else? If you don't do that, we'll come at the end of the story to what happens. This is the whole drama of the spiritual life. Can you muster the capacity to order your life properly to the summum bonum?
Three levels of value: Pascal and Kierkegaard
Okay, you say, I get that. But what is it? How do I find it? What is the treasure? What is the pearl of great price? Let me rely here on both Pascal — the great French mathematician, scientist, and philosopher — and Kierkegaard, that great 19th-century philosophical thinker. They both say something similar about three stages of life, or three stages of value. Call them the goods of the body, the goods of the mind, and the goods of the heart.
What are the goods of the body? All those values associated with sensual pleasure — food and drink and sex and other forms of sensual delight. Are those good things? Yes. I've said a million times, Catholics aren't Puritans. We like the body. We like the goods of the body. We're in favor of food and drink and sex and sensual pleasure. They're all good things. Whatever God makes is good — indeed, very good. So we like all these things. They're goods. But they're not the summum bonum. They're not the highest good.
Plato understood this. This is a very ancient perception. Why aren't they the summum bonum? If you're a hedonist, you think they are — that's what life's all about. Eat, drink, and be merry. Get as much pleasure as you can. But what sages across the ages realized is how ephemeral, how fleeting these goods are.
The fleeting nature of bodily goods
I'll give an example. When I was in Santa Barbara — I was there for six years, loved it, lived in that beautiful city — one thing I loved to do was walk the mountain trails right near my house. There was this good, challenging walk up the mountain. I'd get to the top after the exercise, see Santa Barbara, see the Pacific Ocean, walk back down, get home, pour a tall glass of ice water, and sit down in my comfortable chair on the back porch, which looked up at the mountains. After that good exercise, the endorphins released, sipping the water, looking up at the mountains, surrounded by beautiful things — I'd think: this is bliss. This is just it. I love it.
But then a few minutes later, the water's gone. And — okay. That was great. And now I'm waiting for my next thing. Like all sensual pleasure, it came and it went. Think of every meal you've ever eaten. The best meal you've ever eaten, surrounded by friends, a nice cigar afterwards — and then the meal's over, and you feel kind of stuffed, your clothes smell like cigars, maybe you're feeling a little sick from that dinner. Sensual pleasure happens and then it's over.
I've told you before about my addiction to popcorn. Just today, before I came over here, I had lunch — very simple, soup and a little bit of chicken and cheese — and I was still a little hungry, so I got a bowl of popcorn. When I'm eating popcorn, the first couple of bites, it's like I'm in heaven. I love it. But then I ate the whole bowl, and afterwards you get the kernel stuck in your teeth, your mouth's kind of greasy, you've got popcorn on your shirt. Bodily pleasures are like that. They come and they go. Wise people realize they're not the summum bonum. They're not the treasure. They're not the pearl of great price. They're good, but they're not the summum bonum.
The goods of the mind
From the goods of the body to the goods of the mind. As you mature and get a broader experience of things, you realize there are certain goods accessed through the mind that are more substantial, less evanescent than the mere goods of the body. Think of mathematics and science and literature and philosophy — these goods of the mind that give you access to deep and abiding truths about the world. As Plato saw, you have stepped out of the ordinary world of sense experience and the goods of the body to a higher plane.
The great story here is Alexander the Great and Diogenes the philosopher. The story — and if it's not true, it should be — is that Diogenes is there on a sunny day, drawing figures in the ground, doing mathematical calculations, when Alexander the Great, who had just conquered his town, comes to stand next to him. He'd heard about this great sage. Alexander says, "I am Alexander. I've just conquered your city. What can I do for you?" And the philosopher responded, "You can get out of my light." He was blocking the light for the figures on the ground. What does that show you? Diogenes was saying: I know you can give me any sensual pleasure I want — you're the great Alexander — but I don't want those things. I'm not interested in those things. I move on a higher plane.
One of my favorite stories is of Thomas Aquinas, my hero. He and his brother Dominicans were coming back from a journey and approaching the city of Paris, which was seen in the Middle Ages, as it is today, as one of the great cities of Europe. They came to a ridge and suddenly saw the city in all its splendor. One of the brothers said, "Oh, what wouldn't you give for that city?" And Aquinas said, "I'd give the whole thing if I could just get Chrysostom's commentary on Matthew" — as we're reading Matthew's Gospel here. What that tells you is that Thomas Aquinas was not beguiled by the sensual pleasures that could come from ruling the city of Paris. He wanted Chrysostom's commentary. He had moved from the mere goods of the body to the goods of the mind.
Why even the goods of the mind fall short
Have we found the summum bonum? Not yet. Even those goods of the mind — philosophy, science, mathematics — give us access to certain truths, but we know this: you answer one question, you've got ten more. Answer those, you've got a hundred more. Whatever truth you come to by means of these sciences, it's not the totality of truth that the mind is looking for. As Lonergan said, the mind wants to know everything about everything. It's not satisfied by particular truths. So the goods of the mind are good, very good, but they're not the summum bonum.
God as the summum bonum — the goods of the heart
What is the summum bonum? What Pascal would call the goods of the heart. What Kierkegaard would call the properly religious dimension of life. When the soul, the heart, is opened up to God and to the things of God — there we have found the highest good. Not something as evanescent as the goods of the world, like eating popcorn and relaxing after a great hike, or savoring a great meal. Greater even than whatever philosophy and science and mathematics can give us. God — being itself, the source of existence, the infinite God. Now we have found the summum bonum, the highest good.
And listen: in relation to God, all the other goods find their place. We don't have to play the game of "I found God, therefore I'm rejecting everything else." No. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and the rest will be given unto you. With your loves properly ordered, you can see the right relationship between bodily goods, intellectual goods, and the summum bonum. But the point is: once you've found the pearl of great price, don't mess around with simulacra. Once you've found the treasure, sell everything else — meaning, don't treat anything else as the summum bonum.
"The Lord, the God of Israel, is a jealous God." That's what it means. Not that God is falling into a jealous snit — he doesn't have emotions the way we do. It means there's no competition here. You can't have two highest goods. When you find the summum bonum, relativize everything else in your life and order it there.
Thomas More as an example of rightly ordered loves
A very good example of this to me is Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England — a man who loved the good things of the body. He had his manor house, he ate fine meals, he was acquainted with the most exalted spirits in Europe. He knew the goods of the body and of the mind. Of course he did. But when he was brought to the scaffold because he had opposed Henry VIII, what did he say? "I die the king's good servant." Yes — all his life he was the king's good servant. He served the political ends of England. He believed in that. He was the king's good servant. But God's first. That's how it works. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and the rest will be given unto you.
The central tragedy of human life
What is the central tragedy of life? I make bold to say this without fear of contradiction: the central tragedy of human life, as Augustine put it, is mistaking a creature for the Creator. When I take anything creaturely — a good of the body or the mind, anything creaturely — and make that my summum bonum, all the trouble in life that we experience spiritually and psychologically follows from that fatal move.
Seek ye first the kingdom of God. When you find the treasure, relativize everything else. When you find the pearl, buy it. Relativize everything else. To get that right is to live as a citizen of the kingdom of God. And God bless you.