DAILY HOMILIES #treasure

If you take just one child from the street, feed them, educate them and give them a chance to become someone in life, you have taken that money to heaven. You will not benefit directly from this child, but whatever you spend on them will never be forgotten by God.

If we are to understand hell as the place of the unfaithful, it follows that there is a place other than heaven and hell where souls go to receive either severe or light beating. This place is what the church calls purgatory. As the Catechism puts it: “Purgatory is the final purification of the elect, which is entirely different from the punishment of the damned.” (CCC 1030-1031) This purification is done so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven.

Money is useless without your soul. Do you feel blessed with some money? Has your business prospered? Then “give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.” (Luke 14:13-14). Do you have any extra money and you are thinking of what investment to do? Are you thinking of building a new barn? “You have it in the bellies of the poor,” says St. Basil and St. Ambrose.

Can I say: “With Jesus alone, I am satisfied?” Am I willing to sacrifice all I have, all my friends and connections, all my possessions just for the sake of being part of God’s kingdom? Can I say with the psalmist today that “God is my refuge in the day of my distress?”

Where is your eye? In other words, where are your treasures? What are your priorities? If your eye is on what this world has to offer, then as Jesus says, your eye is unhealthy and your body is full of darkness. This explains why people get involved in all kinds of evil and are prepared to do anything just to “make it big” in this world. If your only goal in life is to “have a lot of cars and houses that you wouldn’t know which one is which” then watch out for darkness in your thoughts, words, and deeds.