“If you were raised with Christ, seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.”  In these words, St. Paul reminds us of something critical, something basic to our lives.  We have been ransomed from death, purchased at a great price, the price of the passion of our Lord.  We’ve been saved by the sacrifice of Christ.  Our lives need to change because of it.  St. Paul speaks about the “old self” that we leave behind in favor of the “new self” that God reveals to us.  He speaks of avoiding “idolatry,” the “vanity of vanities” that the Old Testament reading described.  Our Lord does the same thing in today’s gospel, speaking of the danger of “storing up treasures on earth” and neglecting the true treasure that will last forever.  Idolatry is not just worshiping statues, or running through the forest praying to trees.  It’s more common than you might think.  Idolatry, the Church teaches, is whenever we honor and revere a creature in place of God.  By “creature” we mean anything that is created, anything that isn’t God.  Money, power, fame, human achievement, other people, sports, comfort.  Even things that are good in themselves, that contribute to human flourishing and happiness, can become idols for us, when they become too much the focus of our lives. Only love, true love, love that prompts us to give ourselves completely away for those that we love: only this truly satisfies.  When we invest our lives elsewhere, in money or fame or comfort or pleasure, we will always come up short, always feel a little empty inside, never get there, never feel that we have enough.  

I’ve been really struck in the last few years by all the news in the sports world about the use of steroids and Performance-Enhancing-Drugs, deflate-gate, and all these other examples of trying to game the system.  These athletes are people that are already on top of the world: exceptional natural talents; they’ve worked hard, gotten some breaks, made millions, fame.  But it’s still not enough.  They’ve got to have more.  They still are tempted to cheat the system, to get just a little bit more. This says something: even the good things of the world, financial stability, health and athletic ability, professional success: these can’t be the only things we live for, because they will never truly satisfy us.  

As another example, Pope Benedict has a wonderful reflection in one of his books, on the experience of beauty, that beauty always involves just a little bit of pain: he says that we are “pierced by the arrow of beauty.”  Have you ever had one of those experiences listening to a musical performance or looking at a work of art, or something beautiful in nature, where it’s so beautiful, it touches you so deeply, that it almost hurts? What Pope Benedict is getting at, is, when we experience beauty, in music or art or the Grand Canyon or whatever, whether we think about it consciously or not, our souls are drawn towards God and this gives us joy and peace.  But this experience also hurts a little bit: it makes us aware that this is not heaven.  We’re not everything that we should be.  We don’t have that perfection that God wants for us yet.  We long for what is completely beautiful, for God, for heaven, for the only experience in which we will know complete and total fulfillment.  These are very profound experiences of God for us, and very profound experiences of our longing for heaven.  

The Lord calls us to store up for ourselves treasure for heaven, treasure that will last forever.  He calls us to stay close to him in the Eucharist, and to have the courage to trust.  To trust that we don’t have to fill up our lives with all kinds of distractions.  To trust that the simple things will fulfill us and give us joy: our faith, the love we share with our families, the joyful sacrifices that we make for those we love.  These are the true treasures; these are the treasures that carry us through to heaven, the treasures that don’t pass away.  These are the things that truly fulfill us in this life, and that prepare us for our destiny, the perfection of eternal life with God forever.