SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (YEAR A)
1 Kgs 3:5,7-12; Ps 119; Rom 8:28-30; Mt 13:44-52
COMMENTARY
The Gift of the Kingdom to Be Received and Proclaimed
We have arrived today at the last part of the so-called parables section in the Gospel according to Matthew. Jesus ends His teaching in (seven) parables with three stories, those of the hidden treasure, the pearl of great price and the net, which further introduce listeners to the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven. At least three messages emerge from this and the final dialogue between Jesus and His disciples that are important for our lives today in relation to the Kingdom of God that Jesus tirelessly proclaimed in word and deed during His public ministry.
1. The Unexpected Gift of the Kingdom of Heaven
The first two parables, of the hidden treasure and the pearl of great price, are called parable-twins by scholars because of their similarity in structure and message. They emphasize the inestimable value of the Kingdom that far exceeds all the goods that humankind can possess. Moreover, following the dynamics of the stories, we can glimpse an unexpected element by which the man found the treasure or the pearl, even though he could go in search of them.
Thus, the Kingdom of God, called by the evangelist Matthew the Kingdom of Heaven to avoid mentioning God according to Jewish custom, is always an unexpected gift both because of its value beyond any human prediction or vision and because of the unpredictability of its coming, according to an exclusively divine plan, with and in the person of Jesus, with and in His life and mission. Indeed, in Jesus is contained every treasure of wisdom and intelligence, of divine grace and glory. He is the treasure “hidden” in God and now revealed to all humanity.
2. A Wise and Courageous Heart to Welcome the Kingdom
Faced with the value of the Kingdom, people are invited to make a sacrum commercium, a “sacred trade” to acquire it. It takes wisdom along with the courage to take risks to make a fundamental investment in life! Mankind will be required to have a wise and courageous heart to welcome the Kingdom. Such a disposition, again, will be received as a gift from the Lord, as happened to Solomon in the Temple of God in Gibeon (cf. 1 Kings 3:5, 7-12) (as we heard in the first reading).
Indeed, in accordance with the biblical-Jewish wisdom tradition, this required wisdom even implies a certain shrewdness, determination, and even cunning! It is the case of the treasure hidden in the field that a man finds, hides it there again, goes and then buys the field to become the master of the treasure. It will be the case of the precious pearl that the merchant surely finds only after a long patient search. The emphasis, however, in both parables falls on determination: “sells all that he has and buys” the found object. It is about human commitment that is fundamental and necessary to receive the given Kingdom! What is more, as we can glimpse in the parable of the “net,” commitment will also be required to remain in the “net” of the Kingdom as “good fish,” lest we be thrown “into the fiery furnace” at the end of the world.
3. Announcing the Kingdom Like Jesus
The final dialogue between Jesus and His disciples gives us an interesting cue to reflect on the figure of the Kingdom disciple. In this regard, the comment of St. Hilary (of Poitiers), quoted by St. Thomas Aquinas in his famous Catena Aurea, is significant: “ Speaking to His disciples, He calls them Scribes on account of their knowledge, because they understood the things that He brought forward, both new and old, that is from the Law and from the Gospels; both being of the same householder, and both treasures of the same owner. He compares them to Himself under the figure of a householder, because they had received doctrine of things both new and old out of His treasury of the Holy Spirit.”
With this in mind, the disciples who have understood “all these things” in parables, set forth by Jesus as the whole of the newness of the Good News, but rooted deeply in God’s ancient Holy Scriptures, are called to do likewise after the example of their Master in carrying out the same mission of proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom. Therefore, Jesus’ last recommendation to his faithful ones before his ascension into heaven will be precisely to go and “make disciples of all nations”, baptizing and “teaching them to observe all that” Jesus had taught (cf. Mt 28:20). In questo, il Cristo risorto ha affermato di essere con loro “always, until the end of the age.” In this, the risen Christ claimed to be with them “always, until the end of the age.” Thus, Christ’s disciples will be called to proclaim and teach the kingdom of God with Christ, as Christ, indeed in persona Christi “in the person of Christ” who is indeed always with them. They will be especially invited to speak and act with the wisdom of Christ, combining new things and old things of God under the inspiration of the Spirit, to draw all to the beauty of the Kingdom.
Useful points to consider:
Leo XIV, Jubilee Audience, Saint Peter’s Square, Saturday, 6 September 2025
[…]I would like to begin with a memory: as children, putting our hands in the soil had a special appeal. We remember it, and perhaps we still observe it: it is good for us to watch children play! Digging in the earth, breaking the hard crust of the world and seeing what is underneath…
What Jesus describes in the parable of the treasure in the field (cf. Mt 13:44) is no longer a children’s game, yet the joy of the surprise is the same. And the Lord tells us: this is what the Kingdom of God is like. Hope is rekindled when we dig and break through the crust of reality, going beneath the surface.
Today I would like to remind you that, as soon as they had the freedom to live publicly as Christians, Jesus’ disciples began to dig, especially in the places of his passion, death and resurrection. The Eastern and Western traditions remember Flavia Julia Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine, as the soul of those searches. A woman who seeks. A woman who digs. The treasure that kindles hope is in fact the life of Jesus: we must follow in his footsteps.
How many other things an empress could have done! What noble places she might have preferred to peripheral Jerusalem! How many pleasures and honours of the court! We too, sisters and brothers, can settle into the positions we have reached and the wealth, great or small, that give us security. In this way, one loses the joy we had as children, that desire to dig and to invent that makes every day new. “To invent”, you know, means “to find” in Latin. Helena’s great “invention” was the rediscovery of the Holy Cross. Here is the hidden treasure for which to sell everything! The Cross of Jesus is the greatest discovery of life, the value that modifies all values. […]
John Paul II, Encyclical on the Permanent Validity of the Church’s Missionary Mandate, Redemptoris Missio
Christ Makes the Kingdom Present
In the Risen Christ God’s Kingdom Is Fulfilled and Proclaimed
Indeed, after the resurrection, the disciples preach the kingdom by proclaiming Jesus crucified and risen from the dead. In Samaria, Philip “preached good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ” (Acts 8:12). In Rome, we find Paul “preaching the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ’’ (Acts 28:31). The first Christians also proclaim “the kingdom of Christ and of God” (Eph 5:5; cf. Rev 11:15; 12:10), or “the kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Pt 1:11). The preaching of the early Church was centered on the proclamation of Jesus Christ, with whom the kingdom was identified. Now, as then, there is a need to unite the proclamation of the kingdom of God (the content of Jesus’ own “kerygma”) and the proclamation of the Christ-event (the “kerygma” of the apostles). The two proclamations are complementary; each throws light on the other.
Pope Francis, Angelus, Saint Peter’s Square, Sunday, 30 July 2017
Jesus’ parabolic discourse groups together seven parables in the 13th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, and concludes with today’s three parallel stories: the hidden treasure (v. 44), the fine pearl (vv. 45-46) and the fishing net (vv. 47-48). […].
These parallel stories highlight two characteristics regarding possession of the Kingdom of God: searching and sacrifice. It is true that the Kingdom of God is offered to all — it is a gift, it is a present, it is a grace — but it does not come on a silver platter: it requires dynamism; it is about searching, journeying, working hard. The attitude of searching is the essential condition for finding. The heart must burn with the desire to reach the valuable good, that is, the Kingdom of God which is made present in the person of Jesus. […]
Faced with the unexpected discovery, both the farmer and the merchant realize that they are facing a unique opportunity which should not be missed; hence, they sell all that they own. Assessing the inestimable value of the treasure leads to a decision that also implies sacrifice, detachment and renunciation. When the treasure and the pearl are discovered, that is, when we have found the Lord, we must not let this discovery become barren, but rather sacrifice everything else in order to acquire it. It is not a question of disdaining the rest but of subordinating them to Jesus, putting him in first place; grace in first place.
Pope Francis, Angelus, Saint Peter’s Square, Sunday, 27 July 2014
[…] Many people, many saints, reading the Gospel with an open heart, have been so struck by Jesus they they convert to Him. Let us think of St Francis of Assisi: he was already a Christian, though a “rosewater” Christian. When he read the Gospel, in that decisive moment of his youth, he encountered Jesus and discovered the Kingdom of God; with this, all his dreams of worldly glory vanished. The Gospel allows you to know the real Jesus, it lets you know the living Jesus; it speaks to your heart and changes your life. And then yes, you leave it all. You can effectively change lifestyles, or continue to do what you did before but you are someone else, you are reborn: you have found what gives meaning, what gives flavour, what gives light to all things, even to toil, even to suffering, and even to death. […]
Everything takes on meaning when you find your treasure there, in the Gospel. Jesus calls it “the Kingdom of God”, that is to say, God who reigns in your life, in our life; God who is love, peace and joy in every man and in all men. This is what God wants and it is why Jesus gave himself up to death on the cross, to free us from the power of darkness and to move us to the kingdom of life, of beauty, of goodness and of joy. To read the Gospel is to find Jesus and to have this Christian joy, which is a gift of the Holy Spirit.
Pope Francis, Angelus, Saint Peter’s Square, Sunday, 26 July 2020
[…] 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. […]
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. […]
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.
