The Pearl of Great Price

During a 9-hour flight back from London to the US, I listened to my seat-mate conversing with a couple across the aisle about their world travels.  For an hour and a half, they discussed all the places they had been, how often they traveled each year, and all the places they were planning to visit soon.  A lot of what they said sounded to me like one-upmanship, but perhaps that was cynicism on my part.  Both parties obviously loved traveling -- spending a week in an Icelandic yurt, going on an African safari, etc. -- and they obviously loved the opportunity to share their adventures with like-minded travelers.  But listening to them began to feel tiring after awhile. 

Although I love traveling and love seeing the beauty of other countries, customs, and cultures -- meeting people who look and think differently -- nothing will ever be as satisfying and delicious to me as entering and resting in what St. Catherine of Siena called "the Sea of Peace."  In The Dialogue, she records her mystical conversations with the Father, who tells her:

It is as if this gentle loving Word, my Son, were saying to you: "Look.  I have made the road and opened the gate for you with my blood.  Do not fail, then to follow it.  Do not sit down to rest out of selfish concern for yourself, foolishly saying you do not know the way.  Do not presume to choose your own way of serving instead of the one I have made for you in my own person, eternal Truth, incarnate Word, the straight way hammered out with my own blood."

Get up, then, and follow Him, for no one can come to me the Father except through Him.  He is the way and the gate through whom you must enter into me, the Sea of Peace.

When I read these words, so many Scriptures came to mind with the realization of what Jesus referred to as "the Pearl of Great Price."  To the woman at the well, He said, "If you knew who it was who asked you for water, you would ask Him, and He would give you living water."  His parable of the man who found a treasure in a field and who then sold everything to buy the field and the one of the merchant who gave everything for the Pearl of Great Price mean little to one who has traveled the world but who has never found what he was looking for.

Once someone has experienced the Sea of Peace given to us so freely in Jesus Christ, he cannot continue looking for new adventures, new "truth," new experiences.  He has found what he was looking for and nothing else will ever surpass that one thing, nor anything else replace it.  Unfortunately, much as we want to, we can never tell anyone else what that great pearl looks like, feels like, tastes like.  There is only one way to enter the Sea of Peace, and that is through The Way, The Truth, and the Life.  There are many doctrines, but only one Truth.  Filling our heads with multiple "ways" or explanations is like traveling the world and still seeking yet one more adventure because the last one has not satisfied the quest. 

To enter communion with the Father through the Son and the Son's own relationship with His Father is the pearl of great price, for which a man would give all that he has and count the loss as dung.  Once we have entered the Sea of Peace, nothing else will satisfy us, and we need not continue to look for anything else -- not even a yurt in Iceland!