I love today’s Gospel passage: the Parable of the Pearl of Great Price.

It’s a wonderful reminder that, as I recently read in “Weeds Among the Wheat” by Thomas Green SJ, we are called to seek and to live for God alone, not to hold onto “God and . . .”

Even if the “and” is something good.

If you are new to the blog, I was a postulant for 9 months with a community of Dominicans back in 2019. I’ll be honest, to an extent I’m still struggling to let go of the idea of “Jesus AND religious life.”

Jesus AND the structure and communal support of religious life.

Jesus AND the thought of knowing my what my place and calling are.

Jesus AND Sr. Mary Newman of the Resurrection . . . the religious name I was going to take.

Jesus AND having a place in life that made sense to me . . . along with all the other ANDs I’m clinging too.

The fact is, we don’t get Jesus AND, unless we’re following that with “the Father and the Holy Spirit.”

Now, we all cling to things of the world that we don’t need to some degree or other. And yes, religious life is something of the world.

Despite our attachments, the flaws in our faith, and the weakness of our love, God is patient, merciful, and kind, and He will not turn His back on us.

The journey of faith is learning, bit by bit, to let go of those attachments, to fall in love with the Lord and to let that love show us that He, truly, is all we need.

Personally, I feel blessed to have had the trial of my faith that came with leaving religious formation. I feel blessed to have had the opportunity (and the grace) to tell Jesus, “I choose you. I choose you without religious life, without certainties, without what I thought my life with you was going to be. I choose you, even if it hurts, and I complain, and I can’t choose you perfectly. Even I have to struggle each day to choose you to a greater extent, I choose you.”