Overview:

Friday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

A Reflection for Friday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

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

Find today’s readings here. 

The word treasure always brings to my mind the type of wooden chest used by a cartoon pirate, overflowing with gold coins and gold chains and precious gems. Given this association, today’s Gospel, which asks us to consider how we spend our treasure, can sometimes feel easy to dismiss as a message for only the most wealthy and swashbuckling among us. Are the rest of us really storing up treasure while dealing with a 4.2 percent inflation rate? 

But insight into the meaning of the first part of today’s Gospel can be found in its second half, which suggests that our ability to determine what is valuable is determined by how we see the world: “If your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light.” A world viewed through the lens of Christ’s love and sacrifice offers a very different perspective on what treasure is, of course. 

St. Ignatius and his Examen can help form our understanding and help us to notice what things in our life truly matter and where we can best devote our resources, whether time, talent or treasure. Maybe I’m not hoarding precious gems, but what if I am buying one too many pricey lattes? Have I spent hours doomscrolling and keeping up with TikTok trends when I could have been sleeping? Am I answering one last email when I should be focusing on family? Or focusing on arguments on X when I should be working? Where is my heart calling me? When do I feel filled with light? What brings me joy, gratitude, consolation? 

A sound vision, based in Christ, fills us with light and helps us to see the world through that light. This determines what we pay attention to. This determines how we spend our time, which is how we spend our lives. And what could be more valuable than that? 

Kerry Weber joined the staff of America in October 2009. Her writing and multimedia work have since earned several awards from the Catholic Press Association, and in 2013 she reported from Rwanda as a recipient of Catholic Relief Services' Egan Journalism Fellowship. Kerry is the author of Mercy in the City: How to Feed the Hungry, Give Drink to the Thirsty, Visit the Imprisoned, and Keep Your Day Job (Loyola Press) and Keeping the Faith: Prayers for College Students (Twenty-Third Publications). A graduate of Providence College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, she has previously worked as an editor for Catholic Digest, a local reporter, a diocesan television producer, and as a special-education teacher on the Navajo reservation in Arizona.