Friday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time
A necessary meditation
“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 lamp of the body is the eye. If your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light; but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be in darkness. And if the light in you is darkness, how great will the darkness be. Mt 6,19-23
By 2003 I was in Nairobi, Kenya. As I have already had the occasion to say, this is the city which best shows the drama of the current situation in Africa. In Nairobi, a small number of very rich people live, who dwell in villas surrounded by high walls and protected by packs of dogs of the
worst race, to defend themselves from the aggressions of the poor people, who no longer accept their status. Me too, I have been attacked in the street by a gang of young people, who have ripped from my neck a golden cross given to me by the grandmother Rita before she died. At the beginning of the today’s gospel, the Lord asks us to meditate on everything we have, suggesting us to invest it in a smart way. Since currency exchange offices do not exist in the eternity, where you can change the money accumulated in the earth, the Lord advises us to begin to transfer into the bank of the heaven the wealth we possess. Matthew, in the chapter 25 of his Gospel, he who, before converting, had a lot of wealth, suggests to us how to do it. Furthermore, he makes it to be said to us by the Lord himself, when speaking of the last judgment: “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me to drink, I was naked and you clothed me”. “But, Lord, when did we do this?” we would say. “Whatever you did for one of these my brethren, you have done it to me” (Mt 25.35-40), the Lord will respond. I think that there is little to add on the radical nature of this proposal and much to ponder. In the second part of the passage, the Lord asks to us, however, to illuminate the inside of our heart where, in the most hidden nooks, live the thoughts, the feelings,
the ambitions, the plans and the dreams. He asks to us, in other words, to bring out the essence of our being and to bring it to the light of the lamp of our eye to see if it really is reconciled with the investment bank in the sky of which he has mentioned before. That lantern is our faith which, to light, needs to be fed from the oil of the daily prayer. Give us, Lord, the silence and the inner freedom to meditate on the truths of the today gospel.