The Kingdom of God is Worth Everything

SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY, YEAR A – 26 JULY 2026

Imagine the scene: A man slips into a weekday Mass in a university chapel. He sits at the back and tells nobody he is there. He is a Presbyterian minister who spent years persuading Catholics to leave the Catholic Church. One of the decisive moments leading to his presence in the chapel came when he was preparing lectures on John, chapter 6, where Jesus says that his flesh is food indeed and his blood is drink indeed. He was struck by the fact that this was too much for many of Jesus’ disciples, who left him, and that Jesus did not try to convince them by saying that he was only speaking symbolically. When Jesus turned to the Twelve and asked if they too were going to leave, Peter, speaking for them all, replied, “To whom shall we go? You alone have the words of eternal life, and we have come to believe.” Further study showed him that this same faith in the Real Presence had been held in the Church from the beginning.

That day when he quietly and anonymously attended a weekday Mass in a university chapel was the beginning of a profound conversion. He was blown away by the richness of biblical language right through the Liturgy of the Word, not just in the readings. Then, as the Liturgy of the Eucharist began, he says, “I watched and listened as the priest pronounced the words of consecration and elevated the host. And I confess, the last drop of doubt drained away at that moment. I looked and said, ‘My Lord and my God.’”

After Mass he walked out in a daze wondering what he had done. But the next day he was back, and the next, and the next. And he couldn’t tell a soul. He couldn’t even tell his wife. He says, “I was head over heels in love with Christ and His Real Presence in the Blessed Sacrament. It became the source and the summit and the climax of each day, and I still couldn't tell anybody.” He was received into the Church at the Easter Vigil in 1986 — forty years ago.

Parables of the treasure in the field

I was reminded of this story by a conversation on a Camino a few years ago with Joseph, a young man from Alabama, whose whole family was received into the Church at the Easter Vigil in 2019. He told me he had come to understand that if the Eucharist is true, then everything else the Church teaches must be true — Mary, the saints, purgatory … all of it. And I personally saw his love for the Mass, and how prayerfully he received Holy Communion.

It won't surprise you that people like this identify themselves with today’s parables of the treasure in the field and the pearl of great value. For them a relationship with Jesus in the Eucharist, in the heart of his Church, was worth everything they had. They challenge us who might easily take the Eucharist and the celebration of Mass for granted.

In these parables Jesus is showing us not only what his Kingdom is like in itself, but what it means for us personally. The Kingdom is the reign of God; it is having God as king over all aspects of our lives.

Notice, though, that the two men in the parables do not find their treasure the same way. The farmer stumbles on it. He is going about his ordinary work and there it is, under his feet, in a field he does not even own. The merchant has been searching for years; he knows pearls, he has handled thousands, and he knows this one the moment he sees it. Some of us are farmers and some of us are merchants. But both men do the same thing at the same moment: they go and sell everything they have — and Matthew tells us the farmer does it with joy.

Consider for a moment: what do you really value most, that you would go to great lengths to obtain it? In a very real way, every one of us worships something. We worship that which carries the greatest value for us, and what we really want determines the choices we make. What we choose repeatedly, or at significant moments in our lives, says so much about what kind of people we are. You could say that we are defined by what we worship.

This is the wisdom that Solomon asked for

This is the wisdom that Solomon asked for, as we hear it in the first reading. God offered the young king anything he wanted. He could have asked for long life, or riches, or the death of his enemies; and he asked instead for a heart wise enough to tell good from evil. He is the merchant: out of everything on the table he chooses the one thing that makes all the rest worth having.

Our spiritual tradition is filled with great men and women who found that true treasure. Think of St Thomas Aquinas, who, towards the end of his life, was praying before an icon crucifix in his monastery cell. He heard Jesus say to him, “Thomas, you have written well of me. What would you have?” Thomas replied, “Nothing except you, Lord.”

Similarly, St Ignatius of Loyola realised in prayer that everything he had came from God, and he offered it all back for God to do with as he wills. The only thing he asked was, “Give me only your love and your grace; that is enough for me.”

In these great treasure-seekers, the pearl-merchants of our tradition, there is a wonderful trust in giving themselves over entirely to God. St Charles de Foucauld, in his Prayer of Abandonment, repeats over and over, “Father, I give myself into your hands.” He can do that because God is his Father — and, as St Paul tells us in the second reading today, God works in everything for the good of those who love him.

We are asked what it is that we long for

Like Solomon, like Thomas Aquinas and Ignatius of Loyola, we are asked what it is that we long for, what we choose. When we make a decision for Jesus Christ, and live it out through the course of our lives, our relationships, actions, and decisions take on an extraordinary meaning. We discover that we have found something infinitely valuable — a personal relationship with Jesus. That relationship is our treasure and pearl; it alone can give us the joy and satisfaction we yearn for in the depths of our hearts.

What is the Kingdom of God like, then? In short, the kingship of God is summed up in the person of Jesus and our relationship to him, and it is worth everything we've got. To know the value of this friendship is to possess true wisdom.

The man in the chapel was Scott Hahn. Forty years on, he is one of the best-known Catholic teachers of Scripture in the world. At the end of today's Gospel Jesus says that a disciple is like a scribe who brings out of his storeroom things both new and old — a fair description of Scott Hahn’s life since. And one of his sons, Fr Jeremiah Hahn, is a Catholic priest who says at the altar the very words that drained the last drop of doubt out of his father.

Scott Hahn sold all he had to buy that field. In a few moments the treasure hidden in the field will be put into our hands — given to us for nothing, what he gave up everything to find. So, let’s take the risk and give everything we have. Let us come and say what he said: My Lord and my God.