Mt 6:19-23
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!
New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989, by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. USCCB approved.
Direct Our Eyes Toward the Light
Over the winter I turned to a favorite hand-knit sweater. Not having used it in some time because I was “saving it,” I found numerous holes in places that rendered the garment hardly useful. It was a lesson to use the goods I have been given.
To Jesus’s exhortation, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth,” it is easy to counter with counsel to save for later in life. But Jesus’ admonition points to the vulnerability of the human heart to attach its hopes to the treasures we most immediately seek and to which we naturally direct energy: security, control, affection. Possessions in these senses have their way of taking over our deeper, more selfless instincts by directing our passion toward things that will pass. We have been given the choice to direct the eyes of our hearts toward the light that permanently illumines our destiny. Though we make our decisions, we depend on a loving God to align our hearts.
—Joseph Lagan is the director of the Ignatian Spirituality Program of Denver.
Prayer
Show me your way O Lord; Teach me your path. Guide me in your truth and teach me. You are God my savior, in you I place my trust all day long.
—Psalm 25:4-5