In today’s Gospel from Matthew, Jesus offers us two analogies of heaven. Both direct us towards the understanding that heaven is of ultimate value and worthy of the complete sacrifice of any other worldly possessions.

Saint Paul described heaven in 1 Corinthians 2:9 as beyond our imagination: “Eyes have not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” Likewise, St. Thomas Aquinas, after a beatific vision of heaven, put down his pen and said, “Everything I have written seems like straw to me.”

Perhaps Jesus gave us a tiny, real-world hint of heaven in the famous Shroud of Turin. This shroud purports to have the image of Jesus emblazoned on the microfibrils of the fibers caused by a burst of laser-like energy, which lasted 40 billionths of a second.

Rivaling scientists have yet to prove or debunk the shroud conclusively, but all agree that something unexplainable, even miraculous, occurred. How can this be? How can we make sense of any of this?

In Frank McCourt’s book, Angela’s Ashes, Angela, Frank’s mother, would often describe heaven to her children as “ Beyond the beyond.” Truly, heaven is beyond our imagination, beyond our understanding, but not beyond our ability to attain. If only, like the man who bought the whole field or the merchant who sold all, we make heaven our highest priority.