Setting our Hearts and Eyes on the True Treasure, Eleventh Friday (I), June 21, 2019

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Friday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of St. Aloysius Gonzaga
June 21, 2019
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 well, 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 that moths can wreck, metals that rust can corrode, or money that 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, 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 investing 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 of all time because it shows just how much he loved the Lord, just how much he was willing to undergo to obtain a treasure and 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.
• St. Aloysius Gonzaga, whom the Church celebrates today, is famous for his purity of heart and eyes that allowed him to live radiantly in the light of Christ. He was born into a rich and noble family, but had set his heart on true wealth, and, like St. Paul, was willing to undergo many sacrifices to obtain it. Before his death at 23, he distinguished himself by the various penances and mortifications that he took on cheerfully out of love for God and love for others in reparation and supplication. He suffered opposition when his father opposed his becoming a Jesuit rather than his noble heir. When he finally entered the Company of Jesus at the age of 17, he took on willingly the most menial tasks, like working in the kitchen, since he, coming from a noble background, knew that that would be a great means to grow in humility and prevent others from regarding him according to his birth rather than his rebirth. When the plague hit Rome, he generously gave himself with a serene and comforting smile to caring for the sick. When he contracted a serious fever that within three months caused his death, he approached that whole painful situation, and even the subject of the sacrifice of his life in death, with clear-sighted joy, because he knew where his treasure is, constantly stating, “Let us go to the house of the Lord.” And when he wrote his beautiful letter to his mother found in the breviary, he asked her to share that joy. He’s a model of someone who set his eyes and heart on God.
• It’s important for all Christians, but particularly for priests and religious, to set this same example. We can ponder a little how the evangelical counsels not only help us to calibrate our existence to the kingdom and be filled with Christ’s light and the wealth of his presence, but shine a light so that others may invest in the same way. By the counsel of poverty, we lift up our hearts from the things of this world and find our treasure in the King and his kingdom: “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” we sang before the Gospel, “for theirs is the kingdom of God.” By the counsel of chastity, we learn how to look and love purely with the eyes of the face and of the heart. By the counsel of obedience, we make the aim of our life to please God, to obey him freely and lovingly in things both big and small. The evangelical counsels are the antidote to the three-fold concupiscence. They are as well the most powerful eschatological homily, showing others, like St. Aloysius did, how to seek and store up and eternal treasure where our eyes will be filled with the light of the beatific vision.
• 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 where St. Aloysius received the light he, through purity and penance, brought to his contemporaries and to Christians since. This is our great boast, our treasure, on which our hearts are set.

The readings for today’s Mass were: