Treasure in Heaven
Homily for Sunday, October 13, 2024: 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time
There was a celebrity personality recently, Marie Kondo, a consultant who gained some fame for a while with a suggestion for getting rid of the clutter in our homes.
She said we should take each item, hold it in your hands, and ask, does this bring me joy?
I’m not sure how well it works or how effective it is, but it’s the kind of hook that’s fun to talk about and make jokes about so it gained some prominence in the media for a while.
Several decades prior, I found my own method for de-cluttering – one I think no less effective but definitely a lot more work.
As a young adult just starting out in life, I was moving from one apartment to another, several blocks away in a different neighborhood.
I didn’t have a car, I didn’t know many people who did have a car, and those who did I wanted to keep in reserve for real emergencies. I was used to walking anywhere I had to go anyway. So I figured it would be no problem to move all my belongings myself, an armload at a time.
After the first couple of trips, I noticed about a third of the way from my old apartment I walked right past a Goodwill store. And they had those big bins in the parking lot, where people could drop off items for donation.
And each time I passed that Goodwill store I found myself looking at these collected articles in my arms and asking myself, is this worth carrying for another half-mile?
Much of the time, I came to realize, the answer was No.
This is what Jesus is talking about in our Gospel reading today.
Jesus invites this young man – and, by extension, each of us – to come follow Him. Jesus is traveling from place to place, no place to lay his head. So he and those who follow him will of necessity have only what belongings they can comfortably carry with them.
But even if we ourselves don’t follow Him so literally, even if we don’t take on his itinerant preacher’s lifestyle, we are still travelers on a journey.
We, the Church on Earth, are often referred to as the “Pilgrim Church” – we are making our way toward that ultimate destination of Eternal Life.
Just like that young man in the Gospel. What must I do to inherit eternal life?
The answer begins with a good life. Obey the Commandments. Love God, love your neighbor as yourself. But to inherit Eternal Life we must ultimately leave behind this life. To gain the Eternal, the Temporary must pass away.
Jesus’s answer to this young man may have been exactly what we read and understand it to be – he may have been inviting him to immediately shed all his personal belongings right then and there. It’s what the Disciples all did, as Peter points out. It’s what Saint Francis of Assisi and his first companions did when they read this Gospel passage.
But it may be too that Jesus was simply reminding this wealthy young man that he can’t take it with him. To enter into eternal life, at some point he has to leave it all behind.
How hard it is to enter the Kingdom of God, Christ tells us. Unless we manage to do that hard work ahead of time. Rid ourselves of our attachments to things and belongings.
So maybe Purgatory is like that Goodwill parking lot. Before we can enter into Paradise we have to stop there and rid ourselves of everything we can’t carry into our new home.
King Solomon in the first reading discovers that Divine Wisdom is the only possession that passes the Marie Kondo test. Compared to Wisdom, nothing else brings real, lasting joy – not thrones or scepters, not precious gems, not gold or silver. They may provide temporary joy – if we hold them in our hands we might find joy in them for that moment. But as the journey continues they are bound to be discarded before the end. Only the Gifts of the Spirit provide joy that endures.
Those Gifts of the Spirit are what draw us closer to God, into a deeper and more fulfilling relationship with Him.
They are also what unite us as a Church. They bind us as a community. Because that too – this community of believers gathered today – we are eternal.
Saint Francis said that the only things we take with us into the next life are those things we give away. We might try to think of that literally – that Heaven will have some kind of giant pantry where everything we ever donated to the food shelf will be there for the taking. Or we’ll be given a celestial bank account containing all the money we ever gave to charity.
But the truth is, all those things of this world will eventually pass away. Francis’s point, I think, is that it is the bond we create through generosity, through selfless giving, that endures.
That is what we carry with us into the next life. That is where Jesus’s promise, that those who give up the things of this life will receive in abundance in the life to come.
Each of us, everyone here, is called to the destiny of Eternal Life. So the true Joy, the lasting treasure, is that relationship built here among our sisters and brothers in Christ.