Captain Jack Sparrow's Compass

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    When the first “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie came out in 2003, I was a bit skeptical.  How could you make a good movie based upon a ride at Disney World?  But, the movie was quite good, and led to a number of even decent sequels following (some better than others).

    One of the main characters is Captain Jack Sparrow (played by Johnny Depp), who is a pirate.  He always seems to get in and out of the oddest types of trouble through the strangest set of circumstances.  His goal, especially in the first movie, is to get back his beloved ship, the Black Pearl, of which he was mutinied when he was commanding.  To aid him, he has a strange compass, which doesn’t point north.  It’s not until later that we learn that this compass always points to what his heart desires most, which makes it a little complicated when he falls in love with one of the female leads, Elizabeth Swan (played by Keira Knightley). 
    Jesus today in the Gospel talks about the kingdom of heaven as a great treasure, or a pearl of great price.  Once a person finds it, they give up everything in order to have it.  To those in the parables, the compass would have pointed to heaven (if that were possible).  There is something about heaven that makes it worth everything else that we have. 
    And in some sense, we all probably can intellectually agree with that evaluation.  Heaven is eternal happiness with God.  We no longer experience pain, sorrow, death, or any of the fallen realities of this life.  We see God face to face, and God, who is love, surrounds us and embraces us eternally.  We worship God in His majesty with all those who are saints, whether canonized or known only to God.  That sounds pretty good.
    And yet, like Captain Jack Sparrow, the compasses that reflect the desires of our hearts, do not always point to heaven, but sometimes go every which way.  Perhaps we feel that no one else knows about the treasure in the field, so we figure we can do some other things before getting back to the treasure.  Or we tell the pearl merchant to hold the pearl on lay-away, and will come back some other time to pick-it up.  But we start to value other things ahead of heaven, and we chase after those these, even when we’re not sure what we will find, or if it’s even worth it.

    Part of our call as disciples is to ever-purify our desire for heaven.  I think the last time I preached on this Gospel I referenced the Kenny Chesney song that sings, “Everybody wants to go to heaven / but nobody wants to go now.”  Whether we’re parents training our kids, or simply training ourselves, we have an important role in making sure that we’re fixed on the trail of heaven, like a bloodhound seeking out an escaped convict, or Captain Jack Sparrow looking for his beloved ship. 
    Sometimes, the call to make sure that we’re on the road to heaven means ignoring the other sirens (Greek mythology, not emergency alerting devices) that call to us, and seem very attractive, but actually lead to destruction and death.  There are so many things that we, as followers of Christ, do not need to see or hear, because they lead us away from God.  Of course, we like to think that we are stronger than we are, that we can handle those sirens without being led astray.  But more often than not, we’re weak, and we will run headlong to destruction given the chance.
    At other times, we cannot avoid things that distract us from heaven, because they are all around us, and so we train ourselves to remember just how precious heaven is, or focus on other things that will not lead us astray.  I remember being in college seminary, which was on the campus of a small, Catholic, liberal arts co-ed campus.  As soon as it started to warm up in Minnesota, the college girls would bring out their towels and soak up the sun in the quad.  Our priests would sometimes remind us that, as we walked to class on those warm, sunny days, it was often good to examine just how beautiful the sidewalk could be, how many cracks were there, what weeds were popping up through the concrete, etc., just so that we wouldn’t be tempted to take that second, interested, lustful, sinful look. 
    Our hearts are often a mixed bag.  Age has a way of purifying that which we desire.  Older people tend to be quite serious about where they are going after they die.  But God doesn’t promise us that we will reach 80 or 90 years.  He promises to give us sufficient grace each day to say yes to heaven, and then we, in response, have to decide if we want to accept that grace or not.    Yes, at church, if we had Captain Jack Sparrow’s compass, our hearts would (hopefully) point to heaven.  But our goal is that the compass always points to heaven, not just for an hour on Sundays.  May we truly recognize how precious heaven is (and how sad and easy it can be to lose heaven), and have the strength to give up lesser realities and lesser desires for the eternal happiness of heaven.

Jack Sparrow's Compass

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

I will admit: when I first heard that Disney was making a movie based on the ride “Pirates of the Caribbean,” I was very skeptical that it would be a good movie.  But, 7 movies later, I am happy to be wrong.  One of the staples in every movie has been Captain Jack Sparrow’s special compass, which doesn’t point towards north, but points towards whatever the person holding it wants most.  The compass helps Jack find the Black Pearl, the fountain of youth, and all the other things and places that Jack or the other characters want, especially rum.  

Of course, a compass that points toward what we want is not real.  It would be a nice invention, but, as far as I know, it doesn’t exist.  If it did exist, though, where or to what would it point?  Would it be a new house, a new car, or something?  Or would it point to a place, or even to a person?

We are a society that generally gets what it wants pretty quickly.  If we want to know something, we simply ask Siri or Alexa.  If we want to buy something, we put it on the credit card, even if we don’t have the money to buy that thing.  Our desires are satisfied quite rapidly.  But we are probably also one of the most miserable societies in this history of the world, because more often than not, our desires fluctuate between very transitory or passing things or relationships.  When it comes to the deeper things of life, many people seem to set those aside.

And yet, our deepest desire is for God.  The cliché phrase puts it this way: we have a God-sized hole in our heart.  St. Augustine, the great Doctor of the Church, puts it this way in his book The Confessions: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”  We seek after so many things and people, but what we really want, what all those things and people cannot give us, is a deep relationship with God.  And the things and even other people cannot fulfill those desires because we really want the infinite, and those things and people are finite.  

A person on the road to heaven would have a compass that would point right here, to the tabernacle, because inside is Jesus, who is the deepest desire of our hearts.  The person who is living out the call that God gives to every baptized person to be a saint would want to have God.  Yes, that person would probably have other things–a house, a car, personal relationships–but they would all come second to God.

Is God the treasure that we desire?  Is God the pearl of great price in our life?  The person who is working in the field and finds a treasure, then does everything he can to buy that field so that he can have that treasure.  The merchant who is searching for a fine pearl sells everything he has so that he can get that one, perfect pearl.  What do we do to deepen our relationship with God?  What are we willing to give away?

Because in order to say yes to God, we have to say no to other things.  That’s not just true with our relationship with God, it’s true with everything in life.  Whenever we say yes to one thing or person, we say no to another.  When I said yes to becoming a priest, I was also saying no to every single woman that would cross my path for the rest of my life (in terms of a romantic relationship).  For a married woman, when she says, “I do,” to her husband, she is also saying, “I don’t” to every other man, no matter how handsome or kind he might be.  When a student says yes to partying on a Tuesday night, he or she is saying no to the homework that is due the next day.  Saying yes to anything means saying no to the other options.  That sounds tough, but it’s the way life works.  And it’s true whether the choice is for something good, or for something that is a lesser good.

Christianity in general, and Catholicism in particular, is getting more difficult to live.  We no longer have a culture which supports living out our faith.  The truths of the faith which cannot change are so often now opposed by friends, family, and even the government at times.  We have not yet reached systematic persecution in the United States, but the groups who call those who live out Catholicism bigots, backwards, and hate-filled seem to grow every year.  More and more we will have to decide what religion we will say yes to: Catholicism or hedonistic secular humanism–a secular type of religion that tells us to do whatever feels good, whatever we want?  And that decision will be made by what we love the most, what we truly think is the treasure in the field or the pearl of great price.  

If we had a compass that pointed to what we want the most, where would it point?  If it doesn’t point to that tabernacle, more precisely, to Jesus who is inside it, then Jesus invites us to reprioritize our lives.  God has made us for Himself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Him.  May God be the strongest desire in our life.