Keeping the Eyes of Our Heart Focused on the True and Everlasting Treasure, Eleventh Friday (I), June 23, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish, Grand Rapids, Michigan
Friday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of St. Joseph Cafasso
June 23, 2023
2 Cor 11:18.21-30, Ps 34, Mt 6:19-23

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today in the Gospel, Jesus, as he has been doing throughout the Sermon on the Mount, continues to teach us the wisdom of how to live as he lives, how to live to the full, so that with him we may live forever. He exhorts us to set our hearts on the true treasure of his kingdom, a treasure not measured in clothing moths can wreck, or metals rust can corrode, or money thieves or taxes can take. He reminds us that our heart will be where our treasure is. If we’re setting our hearts on this-worldly treasures — pleasure, getting our way, health, fame, material possessions big or small — our hearts will be weighed down and enslaved, and it will be difficult to lift them to the Lord. If we set our hearts on the kingdom, on storing up for ourselves treasure in heaven, then we can turn everything into an investment in eternity. Jesus says something similar in his image of the eye. He reminds us that the eye is the lamp of the body. If it is fixed on God, if it sees clearly and purely in his holy light, then the body and soul will be filled with light; but if is blinded by the shadows of the concupiscence of the flesh (lust), of the eyes (materialism) or of the pride of life (for power or control), the whole body will be and walk in darkness.
• So today is an opportunity for us to examine our eyes and hearts to see whether they’re truly set on God and the things of God. The Light has come into the world, as St. John tells us in his Prologue, but we need to choose the light instead of darkness, to purify our hearts of desires unworthy of the kingdom, to cleanse our eyes of any debris that keeps us from seeing Christ in the persons and events of the day.
• St. Paul was one who purified his heart and eyes in the manner in which Jesus is calling us all to do. He fixed his eyes and heart on Christ and began to order everything in such a way that not only did he amass an enormous, indestructible spiritual treasure but enriched us all by that same wealth given to him by God. Today’s first reading features a passage in which he summarized all of his sufferings. For me it’s one of the most moving passages in Sacred Scripture because it shows how much Paul loved the Lord, how much he was willing to undergo to obtain the treasure and to help us to grasp the inheritance Christ has won for us and is offering for us. He was in the middle of a conversation with the Corinthians with regard to the impostors who had come among them sowing darnel and bragging about their credentials. So he bragged about his own. He checked off the box that he was a Hebrew (not just a Jew but a Hebrew-speaking Jew, a real pride of honor among the Jews of Palestine versus those of the diaspora), a descendent of Abraham and a minister of Christ. He said he was all of that and more. Adding to his credentials, he presented the ways he had been crucified with Christ through labors, imprisonments, beatings and numerous brushes with death. “Five times at the hands of the Jews I received forty lashes minus one [which often killed the recipient]; three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned [and basically killed before the prayers of the Church raised him from the dead], three times I was shipwrecked, I passed a night and a day on the deep; on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my own race, dangers from Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers at sea, dangers among false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many sleepless nights, through hunger and thirst, through frequent fastings, through cold and exposure.” But none of these were his worst sufferings. He said, “Apart from these things, there is the daily pressure upon me of my anxiety for all the churches.” He cared for all of the Churches he had founded, sacrificed for them, prayed for them, fundraised for them, tried to protect them from wolves in apostles’ clothing, as he was doing with the Corinthians. He had kept his eyes and heart on the Lord throughout all of these pains and was trying to help the Corinthians do the same. He boasted of his weakness precisely because that was the best way that the treasure and light of his life was able to be manifested. And we know that the treasure he has received is so much greater than his great sufferings.
• Today we celebrate the feast of a saint who kept the eyes of his heart on Christ the Light of the World, his true treasure, and who sought to help so many others to do the same. St. Joseph Cafasso (1811-1860) is one of the greatest diocesan priests of all time, someone who with St. John Nepomuc, St. John Vianney, and St. Leopoldo Mandic, was named by St. John Paul II in Reconciliatio et Paenitentia was one of the four “extraordinary apostles of the confessional.” From a young age, knowing that he had received a priestly vocation, he sought to keep his eyes on Christ and seek first his kingdom. He was ordained at the tender age of 22, got his doctorate a few years later, and became one of the leaders of a house of formation for priests called the Convitto di San Francesco. There he sought to help his brother priests learn how to overcome spiritual worldliness and build their lives on friendship with Christ. One he introduced into that circle was an orphan he met when he was 15 and the orphan 11. The orphan’s name was Giovanni Bosco. John couldn’t prepare to be a priest because he didn’t have the money for studies, but Joseph Cafasso tutored him to get him ready for seminary, and, after Joseph had founded a ministry for ruffians, involved John Bosco in the work and, after Don Bosco’s ordination, entrusted it to him. St. Joseph Cafasso became a spiritual director to him and to many, including four would would go on to be canonized thanks to his helping them live in the light of the Lord and calibrate everything to God as the true love of their hearts. He’s most famous, however, for his work as a tender confessor to all who would come but especially to prisoners. He would go into prisons that even prison guards wouldn’t enter to confess the people within, and help them divert from the things people seek in the world, and even divert their attention from the sins and crimes they had committed, and focus above all on the mercy of God. He would patiently persuade and help those on death row to make their peace with God and seize an eternal treasure. He would call them his “saints of the gallows.” He died at the age of 49 having founded so many different apostolates and having given his life to trying to help others enter into friendship with Christ alongside him, live in his light, and seek eternal treasure.
• As we prepare to enter into Christ’s passion in the Mass, it’s an opportunity for us to recalibrate, to set our eyes on the Lamb of God, to lift up our hearts to the Lord, to boast of our weakness with St. Paul so that the beauty of Christ’s strength may radiate all the more. Here in the Eucharist we vest ourselves anew in our baptismal garment that moths can’t destroy. We ground ourselves in firmly on a rock that rust can’t corrode. We unite ourselves with a treasure far greater than all the money in the world, the pearl of great price worth sacrificing everything in life to obtain. This is our great boast, our treasure, on which our hearts are set.

The readings for today’s Mass were:

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