Friday, Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

We often say of people that their heart wasn’t in it. If our heart is not in something, it shows that it is not so important to us. What we really value, our treasure, will always seize our heart. As Jesus says in today’s gospel reading, ‘For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also’. Jesus’ treasure was God, his Father, and God’s people, and that is why he gave his heart to God and to God’s people. Jesus wants us too to take God as our primary treasure and because he himself is God-with-us he wants us to take himself as our treasure. We are to value him above all else. As a result, we are to give our heart to him, loving him with all our heart. In the gospel reading, Jesus is clearly aware we can easily give our heart to material possessions of one kind or another. They become our treasure. Yet, they don’t last; they are easily destroyed or stolen. The Lord is the only treasure that endures. His love lasts forever. Nothing created can separate us from his love for us. He is the only treasure worthy of our full heart. He is a treasure worth making sacrifices for. Jesus once spoke a parable about treasure hidden in a field. When the day labourer found it, he sold everything he owned to purchase the field with its treasure. He fell in love with this treasure that he had unexpectedly come across and he let everything go to possess it. If we really see the Lord as our primary treasure, we will make every effort to hold onto this treasure, even if it means giving up lesser treasures. Saint Paul wrote in his letter to the Philippians, ‘I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things’. Our calling is to keep recognizing the Lord as our greatest treasure and to rejoice in the surpassing value of his relationship with us and ours with him.