Jul 23, 2025 Written by 

Always looking for more. New and old things

This Sunday’s Gospel Reading (cf. Mt 13:44-52) consists of the final verses of the chapter Matthew devotes to the parable of the Kingdom of Heaven. The passage includes three parables that are very briefly outlined: that of the hidden treasure, that of the precious pearl, and that of the net cast into the sea.

I will look at the first two in which the Kingdom of Heaven is compared to two different “precious” items, namely, the treasure hidden in the field and the pearl of great value. The reaction of the one who finds the pearl or the treasure is practically the same: the man and the merchant sell everything to buy what is now most dear to them. With these two similes, Jesus proposes to involve us in the building of the Kingdom of Heaven, presenting an essential characteristic of Christian life, of the life of the Kingdom of heaven: those who fully pledge themselves to the Kingdom are those who are willing to stake everything, who are courageous. Indeed, both the man and the merchant in the two parables sell everything they have, thus renouncing their material security. From this it can be understood that the building of the Kingdom requires not only the grace of God, but also the active willingness of humanity. Everything is done by grace, everything! We need only have the willingness to receive it, not to resist grace: grace does everything but it takes ‘my’ responsibility, ‘my’ willingness.

The gestures of that man and the merchant who go searching, depriving themselves of their goods in order to buy more precious treasures, are decisive gestures; they are radical gestures; I would say that they are only ‘one way’ gestures, not a ‘round trip’: they are ‘one way’ gestures. Moreover, they are made with joy because both of them have found a treasure. We are called upon to assume the attitude of these two Gospel figures, so that we too may become healthily restless seekers of the Kingdom of Heaven. It is a matter of abandoning the heavy burden of our worldly certainties that prevent us from seeking and building up the Kingdom: the desire for possession, the thirst for profit and power, and thinking only about ourselves.

In our times, as we are all aware, the lives of some people can end up mediocre and dull because they probably do not go in search of a true treasure: they are content with attractive but fleeting things, glittering flashes that prove illusory as they give way to darkness. Instead the light of the Kingdom is not like fireworks, it is light: fireworks last only an instant, whereas the light of the Kingdom accompanies us all our life.

The Kingdom of Heaven is the opposite of the superfluous things that the world offers; it is the opposite of a dull life: it is a treasure that renews life every day and leads it to expand towards wider horizons. Indeed, those who have found this treasure have a creative and inquisitive heart, which does not repeat but rather invents, tracing and setting out on new paths which lead us to love God, to love others, and to truly love ourselves. The sign of those who walk this path of the Kingdom is creativity, always seeking more. And creativity is what takes life and gives life, and gives, and gives, and gives... It always looks for many different ways to give life.

Jesus, who is the hidden treasure and the pearl of great value, cannot but inspire joy, all the joy of the world: the joy of discovering a meaning for one’s life, the joy of feeling committed to the adventure of holiness.

May the Blessed Virgin help us to search every day for the treasure of the Kingdom of Heaven, so that the love God has given us through Jesus may be manifested in our words and gestures.

[Pope Francis, Angelus 26 July 2020].

 

 

"Every scribe who has become a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who takes out of his treasure new things and old things" (Mt 13:52)

With this significant image Jesus includes - in the order of Chapter 13 of St Matthew - an important series of parables about the kingdom of heaven. The intention of the Master of Galilee is to make it clear that he did not come to "make a tabula rasa" of the religion, eras, culture, traditions and memory of the Jewish faith. Certainly, his kerygmatic proclamation inaugurated a new era for the faith and for all humanity. It was not, however, an ahistorical destructive deconstruction; on the contrary, it meant an inclusive construction of all social, anthropological and religious times and spaces.

In a similar vein, Pope Francis warns us of the dangers in our day of this tendency: 'For this same reason, a loss of the sense of history is also fostered, causing further disintegration. One senses the cultural penetration of a kind of 'deconstructionism', whereby human freedom claims to build everything from scratch. All that remains is the need to consume without limits and the accentuation of many forms of individualism without content" (Fratelli tutti, n. 13).The image of the "father or head of the family" that Jesus outlines in his teaching is very significant. The image of pater familias who knows how to wisely interpret the historical kairos he is living is very welcoming from many points of view, including the generational one. Drawing on the treasure chest of treasures, both new and ancient, he shows the imagination of his listeners the imprint of the kingdom of heaven, where there are neither excluded nor discarded. They are all treasures for the God of this new kingdom!

On several occasions, Jesus took care to teach, with his pedagogy of simplicity and the depth of the everyday scene, that the generational extremes, instead of being discarded, should be seen as examples to treasure.

This vision brings us closer again to some fundamental concepts expressed by Pope Francis in his encyclical Brothers All, such as, for example: 'The lack of children, which causes an ageing population, together with the abandonment of the elderly to painful loneliness, implicitly affirms that everything ends with us, that only our individual interests count' (no. 19).

Jesus publicly offers a vision of children, and of children in the concept of the human family, with a very strong inclusive content for his disciples and all present. In the social scale of those times, children occupied a forgotten and marginal place, especially if they were the children of poor families or foreigners: "Then children were brought to him to lay hands on them and to pray; but the disciples scolded them. But Jesus said to them, 'Let the children come to me, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And having laid his hands on them, he departed" (Mt 19:13-15). The disciples act in line with those cultural and social mandates of rejection. Jesus shows them a new path not only of fraternal inclusion but also of referentiality of children, with their treasures of purity in the social economy of his kingdom. The new treasures needed for human fraternity!

The same happens with the elderly. Jesus pauses in front of the place of offerings, often used as a public setting to demonstrate economic power, the supremacy of castes and social elites, all masquerading as religion. In the Gospel account we read: "And he sat in front of the treasury and observed how the crowd threw coins into the treasury. And many rich people were throwing many. But when a poor widow came she threw in two pennies, that is, a penny. Then he called his disciples to him and said to them, 'Truly I tell you, this widow has thrown more into the treasury than all the others. For all have given of their surplus, but she in her poverty has put in all that she had, all that she had to live on'" (Mk 12:41-44). Once again, the inclusive and referential treasure of the poor, elderly woman showed that other parameters such as human fraternity were needed in his counter-culture of the kingdom. Jesus, in highlighting the fact that the elderly woman was giving all she had and not the superfluous, offers a clear teaching, exemplifying a wisdom that those present need to assimilate. Reflected in it is the indispensable reserve of human old age, which urges us to teach that true treasure consists in giving, in being and not in accumulating, holding back or appearing. Ancient treasures are essential for human fraternity!

The blindness that prevents us today as a human family from perceiving the importance of the exemplariness and wisdom of the elderly is clearly pointed out in the encyclical: "We do not realise that isolating the elderly and abandoning them to the care of others without adequate and caring accompaniment by the family, mutilates and impoverishes the family itself. Moreover, it ends up depriving young people of the necessary contact with their roots and with a wisdom that youth alone cannot attain' (Fratelli tutti, n. 19).

The wise father of Jesus' pedagogy invites us to strive to bring the extremes of human society closer together so that we can treasure the good in them, unite what is divided and recompose our sense of social, religious, human and fraternal belonging. "The arduous task of overcoming what divides us without losing the identity of each one presupposes that a fundamental sense of belonging remains alive in everyone. Indeed, our society succeeds when each person, each social group, feels truly at home. In a family, parents, grandparents, children are at home; no one is excluded' (Fratelli tutti, n. 230).

[Marcelo Figueroa, in L'Osservatore Romano;

https://www.osservatoreromano.va/it/news/2020-11/quo-259/con-tesori-nuovi-e-antichi.html]

88 Last modified on Wednesday, 23 July 2025 05:00
don Giuseppe Nespeca

Giuseppe Nespeca è architetto e sacerdote. Cultore della Sacra scrittura è autore della raccolta "Due Fuochi due Vie - Religione e Fede, Vangeli e Tao"; coautore del libro "Dialogo e Solstizio".

Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
While the various currents of human thought both in the past and at the present have tended and still tend to separate theocentrism and anthropocentrism, and even to set them in opposition to each other, the Church, following Christ, seeks to link them up in human history, in a deep and organic way [Dives in Misericordia n.1]
Mentre le varie correnti del pensiero umano nel passato e nel presente sono state e continuano ad essere propense a dividere e perfino a contrapporre il teocentrismo e l'antropocentrismo, la Chiesa invece, seguendo il Cristo, cerca di congiungerli nella storia dell'uomo in maniera organica e profonda [Dives in Misericordia n.1]
Jesus, however, reverses the question — which stresses quantity, that is: “are they few?...” — and instead places the question in the context of responsibility, inviting us to make good use of the present (Pope Francis)
Gesù però capovolge la domanda – che punta più sulla quantità, cioè “sono pochi?...” – e invece colloca la risposta sul piano della responsabilità, invitandoci a usare bene il tempo presente (Papa Francesco)
The Lord Jesus presented himself to the world as a servant, completely stripping himself and lowering himself to give on the Cross the most eloquent lesson of humility and love (Pope Benedict)
Il Signore Gesù si è presentato al mondo come servo, spogliando totalmente se stesso e abbassandosi fino a dare sulla croce la più eloquente lezione di umiltà e di amore (Papa Benedetto)
More than 600 precepts are mentioned in the Law of Moses. How should the great commandment be distinguished among these? (Pope Francis)
Nella Legge di Mosè sono menzionati oltre seicento precetti. Come distinguere, tra tutti questi, il grande comandamento? (Papa Francesco)
The invitation has three characteristics: freely offered, breadth and universality. Many people were invited, but something surprising happened: none of the intended guests came to take part in the feast, saying they had other things to do; indeed, some were even indifferent, impertinent, even annoyed (Pope Francis)
L’invito ha tre caratteristiche: la gratuità, la larghezza, l’universalità. Gli invitati sono tanti, ma avviene qualcosa di sorprendente: nessuno dei prescelti accetta di prendere parte alla festa, dicono che hanno altro da fare; anzi alcuni mostrano indifferenza, estraneità, perfino fastidio (Papa Francesco)
Those who are considered the "last", if they accept, become the "first", whereas the "first" can risk becoming the "last" (Pope Benedict)
Proprio quelli che sono considerati "ultimi", se lo accettano, diventano "primi", mentre i "primi" possono rischiare di finire "ultimi" (Papa Benedetto)
St Clement of Alexandria commented: “Let [the parable] teach the prosperous that they are not to neglect their own salvation, as if they had been already foredoomed, nor, on the other hand, to cast wealth into the sea, or condemn it as a traitor and an enemy to life, but learn in what way and how to use wealth and obtain life” (Who is the Rich Man That Shall Be Saved, 27, 1-2) [Pope Benedict]
Così commenta San Clemente di Alessandria: «La parabola insegni ai ricchi che non devono trascurare la loro salvezza come se fossero già condannati, né devono buttare a mare la ricchezza né condannarla come insidiosa e ostile alla vita, ma devono imparare in quale modo usare la ricchezza e procurarsi la vita» (Quale ricco si salverà?, 27, 1-2) [Papa Benedetto]

Due Fuochi due Vie - Vol. 1 Due Fuochi due Vie - Vol. 2 Due Fuochi due Vie - Vol. 3 Due Fuochi due Vie - Vol. 4 Due Fuochi due Vie - Vol. 5 Dialogo e Solstizio I fiammiferi di Maria

duevie.art

don Giuseppe Nespeca

Tel. 333-1329741


Disclaimer

Questo blog non rappresenta una testata giornalistica in quanto viene aggiornato senza alcuna periodicità. Non può pertanto considerarsi un prodotto editoriale ai sensi della legge N°62 del 07/03/2001.
Le immagini sono tratte da internet, ma se il loro uso violasse diritti d'autore, lo si comunichi all'autore del blog che provvederà alla loro pronta rimozione.
L'autore dichiara di non essere responsabile dei commenti lasciati nei post. Eventuali commenti dei lettori, lesivi dell'immagine o dell'onorabilità di persone terze, il cui contenuto fosse ritenuto non idoneo alla pubblicazione verranno insindacabilmente rimossi.