For where your treasure is...

Today's readings contain so many pearls of wisdom...

The first one from 2 Kings has some rather scary events, in which Athaliah goes into such a fit of rage that she seeks to slay her own dead son's children. One son is saved by his aunt, who hides him away for seven years. For one, I can't figure out how she wouldn't realize that a child is missing, unless she ordered other people to do the actual slaying. For another, this plot line, although usually with an evil uncle (or steward), seems very familiar. Hamlet, Prince Caspian, Return of the King...

In the end, the child reclaims his birthright to become king, his grandmother is killed, and everything is restored to order. The kid was seven years old when he became king, but ended up reigning for forty years (very important biblical number, it seems). But he follows the Lord during his entire kingship, which is extremely admirable, considering so many of the other kings talked about in history.

In stories like Prince Caspian and Return of the King, it takes a lot of faith to accept and hail a new king... It's not like now, in the US, where we can only have one president for a maximum of two terms. The people were stuck with their leader until he or she died, so that if they were freaky leaders like I'm sure Athaliah was, they couldn't do anything about it.

Lately, I've been really disillusioned with politics and politicians, most of whom only seem to be invested in their own wealth and/or power. The best politicians are ones that actually keep promises, believe in something greater than themselves, and actually practice it. They are few and far between, unfortunately... Which is why this first reading was so intriguing to me. Faced with leading a place of such import as Jerusalem, Joash, the king, must have faced so much temptation with power, and yet he maintained respect and reverence, going down in history as a great leader.

The Gospel is one of those super-famous passages in Matthew 6 about treasure and the eye/light/dark thing... I'll just copy the first part since it's short:

Jesus said to his disciples:

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth,

where moth and decay destroy, and thieves break in and steal.

But store up treasures in heaven,

where neither moth nor decay destroys, nor thieves break in and steal.

For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.”

The treasure part is pretty understandable, but its Truth is poignant. At Mass today, the priest spoke for less than a minute, speaking about how a family was planning a funeral and decided that this passage perfectly described the deceased person's life. What an honor!

Where is my heart? Am I setting my heart only on earthly treasures: money, friends, hobbies (which are all good in their way), or am I pursuing the treasure of eternal life? How do I do this?

I picked up "Rediscovering Catholicism" by Matthew Kelly again after letting it gather dust on my bookshelf for far too long... And there's a chapter on leading an authentic life that I found was spot on. Kelly says, "Our daily tasks have spiritual value. You don't work for eight dollars an hour, you work to transform your soul, to become more fully yourself, and thus, to give glory to God" (69). He reasons that we, as Christians, have lost the art of striving for holiness, because we have forgotten what it is.

Even in my daily, mundane tasks, I can pursue holiness by giving everything to God.

And as for the eye/light/darkness thing, since I like taking pictures of eyes so much (hahaha), I decided to do my picture for part of that passage:

"The lamp of the body is the eye. If your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light."
-Matthew 6:22