TRUE TREASURES TO BE STORED IN HEAVEN

 

SAINT ALOYSIUS GONZAGA, RELIGIOUS

Reflection from Friar Nicholas Okeke, OP 

2 Kings 11:1-4,9-18,20; Ps 132:11-14,17-18; Mt 6:19-23

Store your Treasure in Heaven

Those who are made citizens of the heavenly City by baptism into the death of Jesus Christ and now living his risen life have their hearts set on the City of God and its treasures. As we have seen in our reflection yesterday, this informed the structure of the prayer taught by our Lord to his disciples. Each aspect of the prayer we have highlighted is a seed for an article of the divine revelation in the Gospel message. God planted these seeds in our consciousness through our profession of faith. The meditative recitation of the prayer of our Lord, and other prayers modelled on the Lord’s prayer or some aspect of it, subsequently causes these aspects of divine revelation to germinate, grow, and develop in our lives as individuals and as a community of believers. We can easily recall what happened in the Christian community in Antioch, where Barnabas and Paul resided for three years. According to the Acts of Apostles, the community had teachers and prophets who met regularly to teach the Christian doctrine and to pray. As expected, the community grew and developed into one of the biggest early Christian churches, such that the Lord chose missionary workers from the community to evangelize other places. Thus, by their study of the Scriptures and constant prayers made or modelled according to divine revelation, a Christian soul blossoms in the knowledge and acquisition of his heavenly treasures.

What constitutes our heavenly treasure is God, who is the Trinity. Our Lord mentioned it in the prayer he taught us. The revelation of God as our heavenly Father is the core and the most important aspect of the Gospel message. The Father is our greatest treasure because from Him comes every other thing to us. From Him comes the Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ our Lord and Redeemer; from Him comes the Holy Spirit, the Comforter and Paraclete. Hence, besides the Father, Jesus is our greatest treasure in this mortal life as the only means or way to the Father. The Father’s holy will is essential for us, his children. This is revealed through the Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ. But to guide us safely to the Father, the Holy Spirit is also given to us in communion with the Father and the Son. We did not emphasize the petition for our daily bread because our true daily bread is the knowledge and accomplishment of the divine will. Our Lord revealed this to us when he said: “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.” Jn 4:34. Thus, the petition for daily bread is first for spiritual food, then secondly for temporal food.

Temporal food and goods rank the least in the treasures we seek in prayer as taught by our Lord. Our Lord advised us not to focus on the temporal needs but on the spiritual or heavenly needs because the Father would surely give us the temporal goods without asking for them. But these temporal goods happen to be the ones we spend more time and energy asking and struggling for in prayers. We use them to measure our blessedness in God wrongly. The reason why we pray wrongly is because our hearts are on the wrong things. “Do not store up treasures for yourselves on earth, where moths and woodworms destroy them and thieves can break in and steal. But store up treasures for yourselves in heaven, where neither moth nor woodworms destroy them and thieves cannot break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” We read of Athaliah, the mother of King Ahaziah, who killed all those of the royal line to secure the throne of David for herself. She lost the throne and her life at last because she desired temporal goods without the will of God. 

On the other hand, St. Aloysius Gonzaga, a young religious of the Jesuit Congregation, renounced his birthright to material things and embraced the religious life and God. He set his heart on the heavenly treasure and devoted his life to God in love and to the service of his neighbour. He worked so hard attending to the sick during a plague in Rome and caught the plague and died serving the sick. His desire to die for the faith was granted, not as a missionary in a foreign land, but in service of God's people, according to the will of God.

Let us pray: O God, giver of heavenly gifts, who in St. Aloysius Gonzaga joined penitence to a wonderful innocence of life, grant, through his merits and intercession, that, though we have failed to follow him in innocence, we may imitate him in penitence and set our hearts in heaven.