9th August Trinity
Matthew
6:19-34
“Do not save up your
treasures on the earth, where moths and rust eat away at them and thieves
tunnel in and steal. Save up your treasures in heaven, where no moth and no
rust consumes and thieves do not tunnel in and steal. Because where your
treasure is, there will your heart be also.
“The lamp of the body is the
eye. So if your eye is wholesome, your whole body is lighted; whereas if your
eye is bad, your whole body is in darkness. So if the light inside you is
dark…what great darkness!
“No one can serve two masters: either he will hate
one and love the other, or he will put
up with one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and greed’s
demon of riches [mammon].
“That is why I tell you, do
not trouble your heart about what you will eat and drink or with what you will
clothe your body. Is not life more important than food, and the body more
important than clothing? Look at the birds in the sky: they do not plant, do
not harvest, and do not fill barns, and your heavenly Father still feeds them.
Are you not of more value than they? Can any of you, by being vastly concerned,
add one moment to the span of your life?
And why do you worry about
clothing? Study how the lilies of the field grow: they do not work, and they do
not spin cloth. But I am telling you that not even Solomon in all his glory was
ever arrayed as one of these. If that is how God clothes the wild grass of the
field, here today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, will He not do much
more for you, o small in faith?
“So do not worry, saying, ‘What will we drink? What
will we wear?’ It is the nations who ask for all these things, and indeed, your
heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. Ask first for God’s
kingdom and its harmonious order, and these other things will be delivered to
you as well.
So do not worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow
can worry about itself. Today’s trouble is enough for today."
9th August Trinity
Matthew 6: 19-34
Sometimes an outwardly
lovely rose blossom opens, and one can see that its center has been eaten away.
The tender seed bed, the source of continuing life, is gone.
Our heart is the
center, the core of our being. It is the treasure house of our soul, wherein we
store everything that is important to us, everything we have connected
ourselves with and worked on in our lives. All the people and things we love
are treasured in our hearts. Our hearts contain the seed bed for continuing
life.
Today, on our 9th
step toward our encounter with Michael at the threshold, Christ encourages us
to look inward and to assess what it is that we treasure. Do we love to shop
for and prepare elaborate meals? Do we work long hours so that we can afford to
have lots of great clothes, a great home, a terrific car? Then clothes and food
and cars are the treasures of our heart. In and of themselves these are not bad
things. It is the subtle edge of anxiety that creeps into the treasure house,
the worry and concern that eats away at our heart when these things form a
large portion of our treasure store. For deep down we know that these treasures
cannot cross the threshold with us. Fear of their loss then eats away at the
core of our being.
Christ
encourages us first of all to store up the treasures of His kingdom in our
hearts. Its treasures are interconnected, alive with the life that will cross
over with us. What are these treasures? They are His words, His deeds, His
continuing presence. We can treasure them up in our hearts by reading and
contemplating them, even a little bit, daily. We treasure Him by taking in His
words in the sacraments, by searching for Him in other people, by finding His
works in the world.
Christ
further encourages us to concentrate on today, to spend time in His eternal Now;
for living in trust of the spirit, moment by moment, will show us the most
important things to love and treasure. Then the rose of the heart, instead of
being eaten away by fear, grows strong and beautiful, full of the seeds of new,
vital and everlasting life.
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