Speaker 1: Welcome to Saint Patrick Catholic Community Podcast. We're glad you're with us.
Speaker 2: Our Catholic faith has a richness of many stories and lessons from men and women, many of them who we call saints, and they have great teachings for over two thousand years. I found a really good one based on what real treasure is. A man named Lawrence, who was a deacon around February in Rome. He and six other deacons were responsible for distribution of resources and possessions and caring for other people. During that time, the emperor starts persecuting the Christians, and they take the pope Sixtus the second and they kill him.
And then they called Lawrence in and said, we know that the church takes care of the poor and the lowly and the sick. So we believe you have a lot of treasure, resources, and wealth. Bring them here to me. Lawrence said, could I have three days? And they said, alright.
Bring all the treasure then. So when he goes back, he takes all the material resources and gives them the way to the poor. And then he gathers the sick, the widow, the orphan, those who were in pain and the elderly, and he brings them together and he presents him before they presents them to all the Roman officials there. And Lawrence goes to the emperor. These are the treasures of the church.
The emperor expecting a lot of valuable resources and possessions is upset and he has Lawrence executed. What does that teach us in that story? One, for the church and again, the church is not just a building or the pope or the clergy. The church is always all of us and it says, true wealth for the church is not found in its buildings, in its money, or treasures. It also says that the poor matter to god, that god has a special place in his heart for the poor.
In fact, there are over 2,000 verses in the Bible that talk about us, people, and how we care for the poor. Third, the dignity of the person never outweighs possessions. People matter more to God than material possessions. And finally, it teaches us that Christ can be hidden in those who are vulnerable, who are poor, who are sick, who are pushed aside. Matthew chapter 13 talks really about what true treasure is in what is called the kingdom of heaven.
Now, here's what we wanna know about the kingdom of heaven. Why does Matthew use the word heaven rather than god? In the other gospels, it's called kingdom of god, but heaven can sometimes make us think that the kingdom of god is a place. They're talking about a future when we all die. So and that's important to know the kingdom of god is not a place.
It's not heaven. He uses heaven most likely, the scholars say, is because most of his audience are Jewish. And in the Jewish culture and mindset, you never say the name god out loud. So most likely, he called it the kingdom of heaven. About 45% of Matthew's gospel is quoting the old testament.
So there's a lot of teaching to those Jews who are following Christ. And he talks about what treasure is. The kingdom of God is about relationships. How important God sees people. Now I've always told you this.
What state of the union is Matthew from? Missouri. That's right. And what's the state motto of Missouri? Show me exactly.
And you know, if you want to look good at your next cocktail party, here when you talk about the gospel of Matthew, here's what you're going to say. The whole gospel of Matthew is about this. Don't talk about your faith. Show me. Don't talk about things that you're going to do and all holy things and all your doctrine and all this holy speech.
And Matthew says that doesn't do it. That's not very impressive. He's saying show me. Show through your behavior what it means to be a follower of Christ. And so the real treasure that can be hidden like a treasure under dirt, a pearl under the oyster, is that even in people, Christ is found and that is true treasure.
And so it is about saying that we are important to God. And that each one of us who come up to the table today, each one of us who gathered, you are more important than any possession. And we in this world and the church need to remember that anyone who bears the name of Christ is called to live that way. So how do we live it this week? You and I, because I'm gonna go through my social media this afternoon and rest up for 05:00 mass.
I'm gonna go through it and hear what people are going to run into, and we run to it every day. The poor are a burden. The poor are a burden. Why should we spend all this on them? They should take care of themselves.
And then we have people telling us possessions, success, wealth are more important. How many policies have we struggled with in church? Because we also struggle with this in the world, everywhere where policies are supported that discard people, that speak nothing of their dignity, and say constantly, possessions, wealth matter more than the dignity of the lowest person. We cannot call ourselves Christ if that's what we support, if that's what we look past. And so I think Saint Lawrence has really challenged us this week.
What are the true treasures that you and I value? The treasure of the kingdom of heaven is not found in possessions or wealth. We know that. It's what Saint Lawrence did. The sick, the elderly, the invisible, those who are suffering.
You matter more than possessions, and all of you are treasures to God. How do we confront that this week when we are going to be told to support things that say no. People are secondary to other things. That's our challenge this week.
Speaker 1: This has been a Saint Patrick Catholic Community podcast. For more of our shows, go to our website and click Saint Patrick's Studio.