Friday in the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time, June 17, 2022

Matthew 6, 19-23

Jesus said to his disciples: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and decay destroy, and thieves break in and steal. But store up treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor decay destroys, nor thieves break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be. The lamp of the body is the eye. If your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light; but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be in darkness. And if the light in you is darkness, how great will the darkness be.”

I should have mentioned yesterday the fact that in the U.S. we no longer celebrate the Solemnity of Corpus Christi on the Thursday  after Trinity Sunday as the bishops of this country moved it to the Sunday after Trinity Sunday.  It is a sad concession to the secular culture in which we live.

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth.”  The Greek word translated here is “treasures” can also have the more prosaic meaning of “stores”, as in food, valuables, or money saved up for a rainy day, or hoarded.  This changes the understanding of the verse a bit since “treasures” implies luxuries and “stores” things that can be useful in time of need.  It is clear, though, that if the Lord means the latter, then he certainly would not want his disciples storing up the former.  At any rate, we can see the deeper meaning the Lord intended in the things of this world which do not help is towards salvation.  These things could be material things, but they could also be attachment to these things, as well as worldly ambitions, a cherished self-image, lust, and so on.  These weigh us down so that we cannot do our work of spreading the Gospel and for this reason the Lord forbade his disciples to carry anything with them on their missionary journeys (cf. Matthew 20, 10).  The Lord does not forbid necessities, of course: he does not tell his disciples to go naked.   “Where moth and decay destroy, and thieves break in and steal.”  We eventually lose the things we try so hard to preserve, including attitudes, conceits, habits, and addictions.  “Moth and decay” signifies the loss of physical things; the loss of our place on earth in society, at work, in our families, is signified by the “thief”, who is the Lord himself, who takes our earthly lives away at the time of our deaths (cf. 1 Thessalonians 5, 2; Revelation 16, 15).  

“Store up treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor decay destroys, nor thieves break in and steal.”  The phrase “treasures in heaven” helps to explain the meaning of “treasures on earth”, since the Lord sets the phrases in opposition to each other.  We cannot store physical things in heaven.  It is not even clear at first what we can store in heaven.  But we must be able to store immaterial things in heaven.  This could mean the merits imputes to us by Almighty God for the good works which we perform.  We cannot merit anything of ourselves since only by the grace of God can we accomplish anything, but God, in his wondrous mercy, counts these acts in our favor.  We can therefore speak of storing up merits in heaven that will work towards our salvation.  We can also think of storing up treasures in heaven as the deepening of our intimacy with Jesus through the good works we do, including our prayers, which have the effect of opening wider our hearts to him.  Thus, “For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.”

“The lamp of the body is the eye.”  The Lord uses the contemporary understanding of the eye in order to make his point.  Indeed, one theory of what the eye does was that it served as a lamp, a sort of headlight, so that the physical world might be seen.  The light pouring out from the eye was supplied from within the body. “If your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light.”  That is, if a person’s eye functioned so the person could see, this indicated that the body must still be filled with light. “But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be in darkness.”  Blindness in the eye indicated that the light within the person had failed and so the interior of the body was dark.  “And if the light in you is darkness, how great will the darkness be.”  There is no remedy for this darkness.  It is complete and lasting.  In this saying about the eye, the Lord Jesus speaks of faith and grace.  If we have the light of faith within us, we can see the world as it really is, the creation of Almighty God.  We can also know about God and his commandments.  Because of this, we can walk the path of life eternal.