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Sunday Reflection with Fr Paul O'Reilly - 24 July 2011


(Year A: 17th Sunday of Ordinary Time)

"The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls; when he finds one of great value he goes and sells everything he owns and buys it."

Do you believe in love at first sight? I had a friend when I was at college. And, one evening, we went out to dinner with a group of other people. At the dinner he met a young lady and they seemed to get on very well together. And, as we walked home, he told me that he had fallen in love with her. This was the woman for him, there would be no other. They would get married, live together, have children together and live happily ever after.

At that stage I wasn't too worried. I thought he'd probably had a little more wine than was strictly good for him and he'd be all right, if not by tomorrow morning, then certainly by tomorrow afternoon. So I took no notice.

Next morning I tried to ring him up, but he was out all day. But that evening, he came round to see me. He was elated. He had spent the day with her, pouring out his heart, telling her how much he loved her, how she was the only woman for him and she had agreed to go out with him.

Initially, things went smoothly; he was besotted with her and she was happy enough for him to be besotted with her. But, after about three months, she was tired of him. She decided that she couldn't love him and wanted no more to do with him. He, of course, was shattered. For the rest of the three years in college, he besieged her - chocolates, flowers, gifts, perfume - you name it. And most of it, she gave straight back. We, as his friends, of course thought he was mad and spent ages trying to talk him out of it and trying to get him to meet other girls and find someone else who would return his affections. But he was adamant - this was the girl for him: there would be no other. Eventually, towards the end of our final year in college, she relented and agreed to give him another chance. It lasted three weeks before she sent him away again.

When we left college, I went to work in a hospital and he went to work in the oil industry on an oil rig nearly a thousand miles away in the North of the country. And, I'm sorry to say we lost touch.

Five years later, we met up again. And I found out that he was still chasing her. He had to work very hard, but he had every second weekend free. So, that weekend, he would get a helicopter from his oil rig to Inverness, then another helicopter to Aberdeen; then he would fly 800 miles south to Heathrow; and then he would get into the car he kept at the airport and drive another hundred miles so that he could stay in the house he had bought so as to be near her. In all that time he had never gone out with anyone else and had never for a moment given up on the hope that she would one day return his love. So far, she had given not the slightest indication of this, but he still wasn't quitting.

Presuming on an old friendship, I asked him if he didn't think it was time that he sought some professional help with an obsession that was clearly getting out of hand.

In reply, he said this: "Look, Paul - I really love her. I'm a one woman man and she is that woman. There will be no one else for me. So, I have no alternative but to hope that she will one day love me in return. There's nothing else in my life that's worth waiting for. So, if necessary I'll spend it waiting for her."

That, I think, is the authentic spirit of the Kingdom to which Jesus points. It is the commitment of our lives most absolutely to the only created thing in the life of a Christian that is genuinely worth having - the presence of Love - God's Presence among us - the incarnation of God in our lives and in our hearts. The gaining of that can be difficult, slow and frankly boring. The reward may never seem certain. And the temptation is to take what we can now - settle for what we can get. But for us and for Mark, there are some pearls in life that are genuinely worth having and we refuse to take second best.

I should tell you the end of the story, shouldn't I? Well, about ten years after they first met, Michael and Laura finally got married. I heard from them recently - they're very happy together; they have three beautiful children. Some pearls in life are genuinely worth giving everything else for. Let's not take second best.

Fr Paul O'Reilly is a Jesuit priest. He is also a medical doctor, working with homeless patients at the Dr Hickey Surgery, in Arneway Street, Victoria, central London.

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