Friday of 11th Week in Ordinary Time, Yr. II: reflection
THEME: STORE YOUR TREASURES IN HEAVEN WHERE THEY ARE SAFE
Reading: Mt 6:19–23
Human beings have both physical and spiritual natures. While earthly wealth is essential for taking care of our physical nature, and everyone is encouraged to work hard to obtain it, it is suicidal to neglect our spiritual nature’s well-being. It often happens that people make earthly possession an absolute in their lives and pursue it at the expense of their spiritual well-being, forgetting that just as our physical nature doesn’t go beyond the grave, our earthly possessions don’t follow us beyond the grave too. However, what we do with earthly possessions follows us beyond the grave.
If we spend our entire lives pursuing things that do not go beyond death, what will happen to our life after death? It will undoubtedly be subjected to eternal poverty. Anyone who starves his spiritual life here on earth, failing to prepare it for its eternal journey, will face eternal poverty in the next life. For this reason, Jesus reminds us in today’s gospel to store our treasures in heaven rather than on earth.
So, with what are we going to fill our heavenly store in order to prepare our spiritual nature for its eternal journey? Whoever wants to be spiritually rich must use earthly wealth to make positive impacts in the lives of other people instead of oppressing them with such riches, and he must live an upright life doing God’s will.
In the last part of this gospel reading, Jesus hinted at what can make people to pursue earthily wealth as an absolute, neglecting their spiritual well-being. He talked about good vision and poor vision. He says whoever has a good vision will have a life full of light, whereas anyone who has a poor vision will have a life full of darkness.
Dear friends, whoever has a good vision about life will realize that life doesn’t end here on earth and, thus, he will strive to know and do the will of God amidst the pursuit of earthly treasure. However, someone whose vision has been vitiated or clouded by greed, envy, pride, and other evils will always be earthbound and incapable of thinking of anything other than earthly pleasures and treasures, and how to obtain them at any cost.
Dear friends, we should ask God today to open our eyes so that we can see reality clearly and stop being earthbound in our pursuit of material wealth.
Fr Isaac Chima