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The
Deepest Treasure
Fr.
George Smiga
August
11/12 2007
Luke 12: 32
- 48
“Where
your treasure is there will your heart be also.” This is an
extremely important line in today's Gospel. It tells us that
what we treasure will control our hearts. What we value will
determine the way that we live. This is so important because
we do not have enough time and energy to treasure all things
equally. We therefore need to make decisions for what we will
place first, what we will value most, what our treasure will
be.
I
do not think that most of us go from day to day conscious
of our treasure. I think we move along trying to do everything.
Then, when our time or our energy run short, we end up responding
to that which speaks the loudest or to that which seems most
attractive. We do not necessarily choose what is most important.
Work is important but is it the highest value in our life?
Money is essential but should we set that above everything
else? Popularity and influence are good but are they worth
having at any price? We need to know what it is that we value.
We need to be conscious of our treasure.
How
do you find out what your treasure is? Take your calendar
or you blackberry and scroll though it. See where you have
been placing your time over the last six months. To what do
you give your time? How much to work? How much to friends?
How much to yourself? Where your time is there will your heart
be also. Take out your checkbook look at last years tax returns?
Where is your money going? How much to your own comfort? How
much to your family? How much to those in need? Where your
money is there will your heart be also. Examine the data at
your fingertips. Roll through your rolodex. Check out your
address book in your email. Look at the family schedule on
the refrigerator. Notice which web pages you bookmark. Where
your energy and attention are focused, there will your heart
be also.
If
in these exercises you discover that your heart has been given
to something rather secondary, to something that is not worthy,
then the gospel calls you to invest in a treasure that will
last, a treasure that cannot be stolen or destroyed.
How
do we secure such a treasure? In two simple but somewhat contradictory
choices: a choice for love and a choice for detachment.
I
think most of us in our heart of hearts know that love is
necessary to build a lasting treasure. The love we give to
others is something eternal. The time and energy that we give
to our children, our spouses and our friends, even to strangers
will not die. I can witness to this from personal experience.
I have been privileged to be with people at the moment of
death. I will tell you in those last hours the only thing
that matters is love. Nothing else has importance. It is the
pride parents feel in their children, the years that someone
has shared with a spouse, the good times and the intimacies
that have been shared between friends which count. When the
heart is given to love, when love is its treasure, then the
heart is at peace. Even in the face of death, the heart knows
that it possesses something which time cannot destroy.
The
second way to secure a lasting treasure is detachment. This
at first seems contradictory to love. Love reaches out and
holds on whereas detachment lets go and sets free. But the
deepest of love always involves detachment. It realizes that
no human love, however deep, will stay the same. The deepest
love of a parent includes enough detachment to let go of his
or her children so that they might develop their own lives.
The deepest love of a spouse carries enough detachment that
life can go on even when death takes the person he or she
loves. The deepest moments of friendship contain enough detachment
to allow cherished memories to fade without regret.
Love
without detachment can become manipulative and stifling. Love
that is willing to let go is freeing. It does not seek to
control and realizes that every human love, no matter how
deep, is only a reflection of a greater love. God alone can
satisfy us forever.
Where
your treasure is there will your heart be also. So give your
hearts to love, and love with detachment. In this way you
may savor as deeply as possible every person who you love
and at the same time realize that no matter how deep that
love is, you will in time need to let it go. But loving deeply
and letting go will not betray us. It will lead us to the
deepest love—the love of God who alone is our treasure.
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