“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.” (Mt 13:44)
God has hidden himself in the field of his creation. He sits, behind a tree, perhaps, or in the tall grasses, to see if we will find him. He cannot hold back from giving hints and clues, like a child calling out “Hot!” or “Cold!” and squealing with delight when what was hidden is stumbled upon.
The fact the God is hidden does not mean he doesn’t want to be found. As St Bernard puts it: “God wills to be found, in order that he may be sought; to be sought, in order that he may be found.”
Deus absconditus reveals something of himself through parables:
“I will open my mouth to speak in parables;
I will proclaim what has been hidden from the foundation of the world.” (Mt 13:35)
Hidden from the foundation of the world is God’s secret desire not only to create – to mold clay between his hands and breathe life into it – but also to step into that creation – to form a body for himself from the clay of the earth and enliven it with his own divine Spirit. In the fullness of time, God got his wish, and walked among his creatures, hidden in plain sight, unrecognized except when he chose to part the veil and reveal the treasure of his heart. Who would have guessed that this plant, this shoot from the dry ground, was any different from the others? What a magnificent hiding place in the earth of humanity!
And though his cover has long been blown, God still loves to linger among the children of men, delighting to draw near in joy and in sorrow. He hides not only in the earth of humanity, but in the field of each human person.
If we wish to find God, the first place to look is in the memory. Sift it for moments of felt presence or grace in our past or in our daily experience. It is not hard to take up a handful of soft loam in the field of joy, and find there the hiding place of God.
It may be harder to find God among difficult memories. Take up a shovel and go to the rocky field of pain to seek God there too. Nothing yields more joy than learning to find God in unlikely places – the place of our shame, our fear, our darkness. But God likes to hide in tombs. And when the time is right, he himself can roll the stone away to fill them with light. Treasures hidden in darkness are the most beautiful.
But deeper than memory, deeper than thought and feeling, deeper than joy or pain, deeper than sin, deeper than anything that has happened to us…in the depths, there is a place where treasure has lain buried from the ages. I will not say that we should dig there, because who among us knows the place, the way to get there, or the tool to use in plumbing its depths? We are not the masters of our mysterious depths, but only guests, infrequently granted a glimpse or a whiff of what lies hidden within. But let God dig, out of his joy, in the field that he has bought at the cost of not less than everything.