Today Jesus teaches “where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.”1 This prompts a question each one of us should ask ourselves: “Where is my heart?” The central theme of this week’s Scripture readings is faith. Like “grace,” “faith” is a word we use and hear all the time, at least in Church. As a result of its frequent use, the theological meaning of “faith,” along with its implications for our lives, can grow dim.
Our reading from the Letter to the Hebrews provides a working definition: “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.”2 It is important to link faith to hope, just as it is important to link faith and hope with charity. Hope is the flower of faith and charity is their fruit.
The Greek word translated as “faith” is pistis. Pistis refers to placing your confidence, your trust, in something or someone. Especially in light of how “faith” is often used, it seems important to note that faith requires an object; you don’t have faith in faith.
At root, being a Christian means placing your trust in someone, namely Jesus Christ. This is why even Catholics can assert: we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Making this assertion it becomes all the more important to have some grasp of what faith is.
In the context of our second reading, hope refers to what you expect as a result of placing your trust in Jesus Christ. This realization spares us the nonsense of reducing faith to mere belief, to intellectual assent to a set of carefully constructed doctrinal propositions. Faith reduced in this way has no power to save. We also don’t place our faith in ourselves, at least not when it comes to what truly matters: life eternal.
Exactly what should you expect as a result of saying “Jesus, I trust in You”? Jesus himself makes clear what you must not expect: health, wealth, and a trial-free life. We must never forget that the only way to resurrection is through the cross, which is why, a few chapters earlier in St. Luke’s Gospel, the Lord tells his would-be followers:
If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it3As the soon-to-be-canonized John Henry Cardinal Newman observed: “To be at ease is to be unsafe.”4
In our first reading, taken from the Book of Wisdom, we hear about Israel’s exodus from Egypt. Leaving Egypt required the children of Israel, along with the mixed multitude who came with them, to place their trust in God’s promises as delivered through Moses, their one-time oppressor.5
Abraham's Journey From Ur to Canaan, by József Molnár, 1850
God’s oath was to bring them out of Egypt to the promised land, the very land to which God led Abraham when he called him in a similar way. Abraham “went out, not knowing where he was to go.”6 This shows us that faith is our response to God’s loving initiative towards us. When we come to faith, we begin learning what it means to trust Christ by taking baby steps.
Like the children of Israel, whom the inspired author of Wisdom refers to as “the holy children of the good,” we, too, in this very Eucharist, offer “sacrifice… putting into effect with one accord the divine institution.”7 The sacrifice we offer is nothing other than ourselves. During the Offertory of the Mass, our gifts are collected and then brought to the altar, along with the bread and wine that will become for us the body and blood of Christ. These gifts symbolize the offering of ourselves. The only convincing evidence that the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ is the transformed lives of those who partake of it.
In the consecrated bread and wine, Jesus gives himself to us body, blood, soul, and divinity. All he asks in return is that we offer ourselves to the Father through him by the power of their Holy Spirit body, blood, soul, and humanity. During the intercessory part of Eucharistic Prayer III, the priest implores the Father: “May [Christ] make of us an eternal offering to you, that we may obtain an inheritance with your elect…”8 This, dear friends, is an act of faith, hope, and love, which is what makes it acceptable to God.
In our Gospel, Jesus urges his followers to sell their belongings and give alms to the poor. In a subsequent parable, he asserts that those who do so are like the Israelites of old, who, trusting only in God’s promise, were ready to depart Egypt at a moment’s notice. In the parable, those who obey Jesus are the vigilant servants who are ready for the return of their master, who can arrive at any time.
When Peter asks if these hard teachings apply to everyone or just to a select few, Jesus tells another parable, this one about a steward. A steward has charge of the household in the master's absence. He contrasts a faithful steward, who takes good care of the other servants, with one who abuses his power and status by ill-treating his fellow servants. This leads to the crux of Jesus's teaching: if, as a follower of Jesus, you have wealth and/or power, much is expected of you in terms of helping the oppressed and those in need.
Contra many self-professing Christians, rather than being a sign of God’s favor, riches often constitute the greatest obstacle to inheriting God’s kingdom. It seems obvious that one who hoards riches and uses power for his/her own sake works against the establishment of God's reign, thus becoming in their very person an obstacle to the realization of that kingdom. It bears recalling what we learned in last week’s Gospel: one who seeks security in riches dies twice.
When distilled, the point of today’s Gospel is that by handling well the wealth and power you accumulate, that is, using it for the benefit of those in need and the building up of God’s kingdom, this obstacle is lowered if not removed entirely. If you save your life by losing it for the sake of the Gospel, how much more do you become rich in what truly matters than by divesting yourself of earthly riches for the sake of God's reign? By so doing you provide evidence for things not seen, a sign of hope.
1 Luke 12:34.↩
2 Heberws 11:1.↩
3 Luke 9:23-24.↩
4 Henri Bremond, The Mystery of Newman, trans. H.C. Corrance, 203.↩
5 Exodus 12:38; Wisdom 18:6.↩
6 Hebrews 11:8.↩
7 Wisdom 18:9.↩
8 The Roman Missal, “The Order of Mass,” Eucharistic Prayer III, sec. 113.↩
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