Homily for Friday, 19 June 2015– Ferial

Friday of the 11th week in Ordinary Time

Optional Memorial of St. Romuald, Abbot

Readings of the day: 2 Corinthians 11:18, 21-30;  Psalm 34:2-3, 4-5, 6-7; Matthew 6:19-23

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth,” Jesus says, “but store up treasures in heaven… For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.” So what or who is our greatest treasure? Where do we find our greatest treasure; the person or thing that attracts us most deeply, from the heart?

I am going to anticipate, since we are all here for Mass, many of us daily, that Christ, really present in the Eucharist, is our greatest treasure. But something is curious when we say that Christ in the Eucharist is our greatest treasure. What is it? What is curious to say and believe this is that we take something created, ordinary bread and wine (although, yes, this bread and wine mysteriously becomes for us the body and blood; the real presence of Christ), to be our greatest treasure. Does this not go against what Jesus asks us not to do in Matthew’s Gospel, which is to “store up for” ourselves “treasures on earth” and not in heaven?

Yes and no. Yes in the sense that in our Eucharist ordinary bread and wine; ordinary things of creation become our greatest treasure. But no, we do not go against Jesus’ teaching to “store up… treasures in heaven” and not “on earth” in the sense that, in our Eucharist, we are not making something created a god. Instead, God; Jesus Christ makes his home within what is created, just as he has made his home among us in human flesh, and so transforms this creation (bread and wine; us) to be Christ’s presence in our world. This is God’s work, not ours first.

This, I think, is at the heart of Jesus’ saying: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth… but store up treasures in heaven… For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.” Do not make created things or people into gods, but value and, yes, treasure creation. How do we do this?

At one extreme, we see greed for earthly treasures: Some hoard the world’s resources at the expense of many poor. At another extreme, some interpret Jesus’ words against storing up “treasures on earth” as permission not to care for creation: “The end of creation; of our universe will happen sooner or later, so why protect our earth; our environment”?

Both these extremes are wrong. Jesus invites us to treasure creation not as a god but as God’s gift. At every Mass we express that we treasure creation as God’s gift: “Blessed are you God of all creation, for through your goodness we have received the bread” and “the wine we offer you…”

I am just beginning to read Pope Francis’ newest letter to all Catholics on care for our environment, Laudato si‒ “Praise be.” Pope Francis makes the same point: Treasure creation insofar as it directs us to our greatest “treasure in heaven.” Value rightly “the spiritual treasures bestowed by God upon the Church,” Pope Francis says, “not dissociated from the body or from nature or from worldly realities, but lived in and with them, in communion with all that surrounds us.”

“Praise be to you… Lord,” for creation; for our Eucharist especially, which directs us to you, our creator; our treasure “in heaven,” where our heart is.