The first book of the Kings presents us with God’s self-disclosure to Solomon who recently succeeded his father David as king of Israel. He was an inexperienced young man when God appeared to him in a dream to ask whatever favor he wanted. He did not ask for wealth or fame. He did not ask for long life or the life of his enemies. In his prayer he acknowledges God’s great goodness to his father David. He speaks honorably of his father’s piety who had walked before God in uprightness of heart, drawing a veil over his faults. He speaks more honorably of God’s goodness to his father, the mercy God had shown to him while he lived, in making him to be sincerely religious and then recompensing his sincerity and the great kindness he had kept for him, to be bestowed on the family when he was gone, in giving him a son to sit on his throne. He acknowledges his insufficiency for the discharge of that great trust to which he is called, and goes ahead to ask for wisdom to rule well as God’s servant. God was well pleased with Solomon’s prayer and gave him not only what he prayed for but also every other thing including riches and fame.
St. Paul tells us that Jesus Christ is the Wisdom and Power of God. In the search of Wisdom, God first searches for humans and presents Himself. God’s initial offer of himself creates in the person the desire for God. This is what happens to us that in the search of wisdom or God himself, we detach ourselves from everything which is ungodly and search for him who is the ultimate, with all the means and resources that God has given to us. Jesus speaks about this process when he tells us to seek first the Kingdom of God and all its righteousness and all other things will be added unto us. He also tells us to lay for ourselves treasures in heaven, where our treasure is, there our heart will be.
Jesus presents this knowledge to us in our gospel reading through the parable of the hidden treasure and the pearl of great price. This parable proclaims the grace of God and the security that Christ’s disciples possess even in the midst of a fallen hostile world. By this parable, Jesus wants us to know that the kingdom is an inner treasure. It is something of great value which the individual can seek, find and hide again. There is always a cost to finding it and possessing it. We must give up something in order to have it, The parable of the dragnet stresses the reality of the present life in relation with the search of wisdom. In the search of wisdom, faced with so many options, we should choose only the things that will lead us to the acquisition of wisdom or union with God. It also reminds us about the reality of the future final judgement as an answer to a present problem. We should live the life of wisdom by avoiding the things that will contaminate us in the present time.
Acquisition of wisdom or union with God is the goal of all discipleship. In our second reading today, St. Paul speaks about this goal of discipleship as love of God. He refers to the true disciples as those whom God works for their good. They are those who live in imitation of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who is the firstborn among many. It is in Jesus Christ that we shall acquire the wisdom and power of God, which he is. Let us always work for the love of God by choosing him and his ways always as his perfect disciples. God reveals his call of us according to his purpose, by enabling us to conform into the image of his Son, Jesus Christ. Like Solomon, let us pray that wisdom might be given to us to live in us always. May God make us perfect disciples of his Son, Jesus Christ and endow us with the gift of his wisdom, now and forever. Amen.
