Were you spoon-fed your faith?

“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.”

A smart aleck will probably ask, “Why sell all that you have to buy that field where you have hidden again the treasure you found? You found the treasure already  why not just stuff it in your bag and walk away?” A truly wise person will answer, “Because this is no ordinary treasure we are talking about. It is the Kingdom of Heaven, and the Kingdom of Heaven never comes that easily.”

We have heard of many stories of lotto triumphs that have turned into tragedies. William Post landed $16.2 million in the Pennsylvania lottery in 1988. But within a few months, Post was broke, having wasted his winnings on houses, cars, boats, and a twin-engine airplane  even though he did not know how to fly. Alex and Rhoda Toth thought they hit the jackpot in 1990 when they pocketed $13 million in the Florida lottery. In 2006, they must have felt that life hit them back, smacked them around, and left them black-eyed, battered, and bruised as their electricity was cut off because they could not pay their bills. The same lesson could not have been made any clearer to Evelyn Adams who won the lottery twice  in 1985 and in 1986. Like William, Alex, and Rhoda, Evelyn wound up living in squalor, penniless, friendless, and hopeless. Treasure had come to them easily, and they lost it as easily.

It is the same with faith. I was baptized as a child, sent to a Catholic school, and exposed to so much religious instruction I complained it was coming out of my ears. I was fed up with God-this and God-that. Then I met a priest who came from a country where the Catholic faith was seen as subversive. His hunger to know more about God-this and God-that put me to shame. I asked him what led him to be a priest. He told me that his father was arrested and jailed for holding prayer meetings in their house. His English was not so good, and I thought that he had misunderstood me. Wasn’t his reply about why one would be scared of the priesthood and not why one would be attracted to it? But he had understood my question perfectly. Why was his faith so strong even though he and his family were persecuted for it? It was precisely because he and his family were persecuted for their faith that his faith was so strong.

As he told me his story, what amazed me even more was how he did not have a trace of bitterness or regret in his words. Instead, he saw everything he had suffered through as a blessing. He truly lived out our Gospel today: He had sold all he had and bought into the Kingdom out of joy.

“It is the time you have spent on your rose that makes your rose so important,” the fox taught the Little Prince in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s famous novella. We can add, “Not just the time you spent, but the effort you poured out for something - perhaps even the blood and tears you may have shed - and everything else you have sacrificed that makes something so important to you.” What falls into your hands easily can just as easily slip through your fingers because you never truly appreciated its value. It is when you strive for and struggle with something, all the while summoning the courage to smile, that you grasp it and hold on to it more tightly.

Was your faith served to you on a silver platter? Or did you have to shovel through trials and difficulties to find it? If you were spoon-fed your faith, it is easier for you to spit it out. But when you suffer for it, then you will be better able to savor its goodness.

This will not make sense to many of us until we personally experience suffering for our faith. In our first reading today, the Lord tells Solomon, “Ask something of me, and I will give it to you.” Maybe it would be a wise request for us to ask the Lord, “May I suffer for my faith.”

This does not mean that we have to seek out persecution and go to countries where we may be incarcerated for being Catholic. I think that we only have to stretch ourselves a bit more to really feel the weight of our faith bearing down on us. Maybe we can swallow our pride and reach out to someone whom we know has been backbiting us. Maybe we can try to correct a malicious rumor we ourselves have spread. Maybe we can just try to go through a day with more patience and understanding even though we are about to collapse under the stress of a thousand and one things we have to do. An added challenge: Maybe we can try to do all these out of joy. Perhaps, we should revise our request of God above to: “May I suffer for my faith, but may I suffer out of joy.”

Truly living out the faith has a steep price. It will never come easy. Is the Lord lying then when, in next week’s First Reading, we will hear him say, “All you who are thirsty, come to the water! You who have no money, come, receive grain and eat; come, without paying and without cost...” (Isaiah 55: 1)? Living out the faith indeed has a cost, but compare it to the rewards we are promised  it is an almost negligible price to pay.

Spend time on your faith. Sweat and shed tears  maybe even blood  for it. Then it will be important to you. You will feel the weight of its yoke on your shoulders. But then, you will be surprised: You will feel light.

Fr. Francis entered the Society of Jesus in 1997 and was missioned to PGH shortly after his ordination in 2009. The Jesuits have been touched by God in their experiences in PGH for the past 100 years.