Friday in the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time, June 23, 2023

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.”

“For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.”  The Lord Jesus offers us an acute piece of wisdom which enables us, with some ease, to identify our true priorities and to understand the target to which the trajectory of the choices we make will take us.

In Psalm 119, 97, we read: “O how have I loved your law, O Lord! It is my meditation all the day.”  The tense of the verb in the first sentence of the verse is in the perfect, indicating that an action begun in the past has continued into the present where it is completed.  The loving of the law does not mean a single action completed in the past but is continuous to the present time.  In order to accomplish this action a person must be vigilant and concentrated.  No other action may interfere with it or surpass it.  “It is my meditation all the day” tells us the result of this love of the law of God.  Notice that “all the day” does not rule out other activities, but that these would be subordinated to or derive from the meditation.  This preoccupation with the law of God — that is, his nature, his work as Creator, his Divine Providence, the Redemption of the human race, and so on, shows where this person’s heart is because this is his treasure.  

In contrast, Ecclesiastes 5, 11 says: “Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income.”  The one who loves money or devotes himself to fornication, drunkenness, or power never has enough.  The more he has, the more he wants.  These are his treasures.  As Ecclesiastes 4, 8 reflects: There is a man, who has no spouse, no child, no brother, and yet he ceases not to labor, neither are his eyes satisfied with riches, neither does he reflect, saying: For whom do I labor, and defraud my soul of good things?”  Giving in to the drive for more and more makes it almost impossible for a person to realize that the treasures which he seeks are ultimately worthless: “You fool, this night do they require your soul of you. And whose shall those things be which you have obtained?” (Luke 12, 20).  His heart lies in his treasure, which “moth and decay destroy, and thieves break in and steal.”

At what do we spend our time and our attention?  Is it on video games or social media?  On our career or our personal ambitions or those we have for members of our family?  These are our treasures, for these are where our hearts are.  But these are not treasures in heaven.  Ultimately they will fail and we will have nothing to show for having hard them.

But to place our hearts on Jesus Christ and knowing and serving him results in everlasting riches.  We will have no need to ask ourselves, “For whom do I labor, and defraud my soul of good things?”  For we labor for God and receive good things now and in eternity.