[Fresco of the “Last Judgment” painted by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel]
How many of us have a safety deposit box? What treasures do you put in it? I am sure that all of us have made some careful preparations for our retirement; setting up 401b’s and IRAs. What is your most prized possession? What special care to you take to protect that prized possession?
“For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.” In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us that we need to ask ourselves, “What is my treasure? What do I value most in my life?” The famed Russian writer Anton Chekhov once wrote, “When I wanted to understand someone or myself, I considered not actions but desires. Tell me what you want and I will tell you who your are” (A. Chekhov, “Storia noiosa,” in Racconti, vol. 1. Milan, Italy: Oscar Mondadori, 1996, p. 351).
We who call ourselves Christians should desire Christ Jesus above all other things. Faith is what we should desire above all else. By faith Abraham sojourned in a foreign land, and in the Letter to the Hebrews, from which we heard in today’s second reading, we hear that Christians are to continue that journey of faith that Abraham started, “as strangers and aliens on earth…seeking a homeland.” The better homeland that Abraham, and all of us who call ourselves Christians, desire is a heavenly one.
Faith is what we should treasure more than anything else. But what is faith? God gives us His own definition of faith in the Letter to the Hebrews, “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.” Faith is a supernatural knowledge; we know with complete certainty that all the things that God has revealed to us are true. Faith is not just belief in a set of dogmas. Rather faith is belief in a person, namely Jesus Christ. The essence of faith is accepting something as true, not because our own senses assure us of it, but because the person who tells it to us is trustworthy.
Many of today’s intellectuals and cultural elites consider faith to be childish. They say that mature people do not depend on faith, rather they depend on science and reason. For them the only way of knowing is through empirical, scientific knowledge. Because they are so boastful of their opinion, many of us who still value faith are sometimes embarrassed about it. We cover up our faith in conversations around the water cooler because we do not want people looking down at us. But we should not be embarrassed by our faith, for faith is a necessary part of any fully human life. In fact everyone lives by faith, even the intellectuals and cultural elites, to some extent.
What is this? 
It is a can of Campbell’s soup right? Are you sure? How do you know that it is not a can of poison, or paint, or ink, or manure? Because it says that it is a can of Campbell’s soup, and most of us have come to trust in this label. But did any of us see what was put into this can? We believe that it is tomato soup because we have faith in the label.
Msgr. Luigi Giussani defines faith as a type of knowledge about reality that comes to us through the testimony of a witness. Just stop and think about how often we believe something because someone has told us it is so. I read that a friend of mine mother has died and the obituary tells me when and where the wake is going to be, so I go and offer my prayers and support to my friend. But why do I believe the obituary? I wasn’t there when my friend’s mother died, nor was I there when my friend made the arrangements with the funeral director. I have faith that the newspaper is telling me the correct information. How do we know that any of the history that we learned about in school ever happened? Without faith there would be no civilization, for each and everyone of us would need to re-invent fire, the wheel, everything on our own because we would not be able to take as true what was handed down to us. Most of our knowledge comes through faith. Human society is built on faith. We could never eliminate faith, but even if we could, it would not make us more mature. Rather it would make us less human.
The most important criterion of knowledge through faith is the witness. The witness needs to be someone who knows what they are saying, and has no desire to deceive us. It is here that we have good reasons to support our faith in God. We were not eye witnesses to the creation of the universe, but the order and beauty of the cosmos makes it quite reasonable to believe that there was indeed an intelligent creator. We were not eye witnesses to Christ’s resurrection, but there were eye witnesses who saw the risen Christ, and those eye witnesses founded the Church, which has endured longer than any merely human organization.
Abraham walked by faith, because “he thought that the one who had made the promise was trustworthy.” Do we find God trustworthy? To we trust in Jesus? This cannot be a mere expression of our lips. It must be a commitment of our heart; we must put our whole mind, our whole heart, and our whole soul into our faith in Jesus. Even when things do not go the way we would like them to go, we must live by faith, trusting in the one who made us the promise.
This means that we must have an encounter with Jesus Christ. It is not enough to know things about Jesus, and to fulfill the external obligations of the Church. We must encounter the risen presence of Jesus in all the moments and situations of our lives. We must desire Him. This year, the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation, which I and some others in the parish are involved in, will be reflecting on this simple phrase, “Christ in His Beauty draws me to Him.” It is a call to notice the beauty around us and see in it Christ’s presence speaking to us. It is a call to develop a true poverty of heart, which is an irrepressible desire for the ultimate and definitive truth that constitutes the human heart. That truth is Christ.
Does the beauty of Christ Jesus draw you to Him? Do you trust in Jesus? Do you desire His kingdom more than anything else? “For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.”
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