Where Your Treasure Is | iPray with the Gospel

“Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Let your loins be girded and your lamps burning, and be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the marriage feast, so that they may open to him at once when he comes and knocks. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes.”

Luke 12:32-48

Our Lord wants His disciples to be ready to meet Him each day in the many people who need us. The French have an expression that is translated as “staircase wit.” It refers to the situation when you come up with the perfect reply too late, when you have already left the room and are on the stairs… How many times has it occurred to you that ‘I should have said something’, ‘I should have helped there’, ‘I should have asked about his illness…’ By then, it’s too late. We’re thinking about other things; probably about our own things. Our heart is full of self.

Consider Gollum from The Lord of the Rings; absorbed in the ring and repeating to himself: ‘My Precioussss’. We, like Gollum, can be so absorbed with our own concerns, ambitions, possessions and comforts, that we miss the opportunity to meet Jesus in other people who need us. Where we have our treasure, we have our heart. And it also works the other way round: If we put our heart into serving others, they become our treasure.

A man popped by to see his friend. When the friend opened the door and saw him, he was overwhelmed with gratitude: ‘Thank goodness you came, I was on the brink of disaster!’ For an hour the host explained all his worries and concerns until the visitor had to leave. When they were at the gate, the host recalled the purpose of his friend’s visit. ‘Wait a second!’ he said, ’You came to visit me for something else, I guess. Sorry, with so much talking, I haven’t asked you. What was it?‘ The visitor smiled and said, ‘There is not much time to explain now. I just came to tell you that I have cancer. I have a couple of months to live.’ You may imagine the distress of his friend. He was so wrapped up in his personal problems that he wasn’t aware that his friend, thin and pale, came to him looking for comfort and left without it.

Mary, may I be always ready to recognize Jesus in those who need me.