TREASURES
July 31, 2022: A Reflection for the 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Yr C
Luke 12:13-21
Take care to guard against all greed, for though one may be rich, one’s life does not consist of possessions.
Thus will it be for all who store up treasure for themselves but are not rich in what matters to God. (Lk 12:15, 21)
Just about every question asked of Jesus came down to the same answer in some form or another: what life is all about. Today is no exception.
Someone asks Jesus to make his brother share the inheritance with him. Fair enough, we may think. But Jesus had bigger fish to fry. He sees to the heart of the question and names it: greed. Then he opens the door to enter a deeper, truer dimension, the dimension at the heart of all life. The dimension to be rich in what matters to God.
You may remember St. Augustine’s famous line from his Confessions: “You have made us for yourself, O God, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” We are created to seek and find treasure, to bear true treasure in our deepest center and to live from that ocean of Presence, the Presence of God. We swim in it.
If this is true, then why is it so hard sometimes to recognize a God so close? I guess you could say that God has as many faces as there are people. God just doesn’t seem to come in the visage we expect sometimes, or think we need. He just comes … And in his coming is the treasure.
How do we respond? One way is to avoid what really matters by making our life consist of possessions. But this only makes the restlessness of our heart worse. Our heart is made for God. And to live for God is to live for others. What really matters to God is that we live in his Kingdom of love.
We were created for treasure, or as Jesus in today’s Gospel says, to be rich in what matters to God. To walk in the Kingdom, living through love in the presence of God. To live from the heart of all life – the treasure of God.