“Provide money bags for yourselves that do not wear out, an inexhaustible treasure in heaven that no thief can reach nor moth destroy. For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.” This line from our Sunday Gospel continues the message of last Sunday’s Gospel. It urges us not to store up worldly “stuff” but rather to acquire the things that matter to God. If we are to succeed in doing this, it seems from this Gospel that we need two personal qualities.
The first is the ability to wait with trust that spiritual realities are real and sufficient for us, and that in time they will be given us. “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen,” proclaims our Hebrew Scripture reading.
The second thing we need is vigilance. What is for us “the thief” that can steal our spiritual riches from us and the “moth” that can destroy them? Sometimes even things that appear good can sidetrack us from spiritual riches. For example, loving parents want to leave inheritances to their children, thus pursuing riches at cost to their spousal relationship or their prayer life. Even members of religious orders can become so dedicated to one or the other aspect of their commitments that other dimensions get shortchanged! St. Augustine (d. 420) was famous for warning that when we sin, it is because something that appeared good to desire or possess was actually not good for us! Our unbalanced longing for the world’s riches is provided a remedy in the opening prayer for this Sunday: “… fill our hearts … with the warmth of our love, so that, loving you in all things and above all things, we may attain your promises…” Let us pray for each other this week that we may be so filled with the abundance of God’s love that we lose any unbalanced desire for other “stuff.”
— Blog entry by Sister Mary Garascia
The post August 10, 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Satisfied: a Sunday Scriptures blog first appeared on Sisters of the Precious Blood.