But Store up Treasures in Heaven
Friday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time, June 20th, 2025
In keeping with my theme of the last two weeks, I will note my dialogue with my Protestant brothers and sisters regarding today’s gospel on the issue of justification in the past. The one particular thing that has always confounded me is how much they focus on “Paul says [blank].” I always wondered why Catholics tend to play the defensive with the issue regarding salvation, usually taking the bait and debating ‘what did Paul mean?’ However, Jesus teaches extensively on the issue of salvation, and it generally follows that when you act charitably, you receive rewards. The point is evident throughout Jesus’ teachings in the Gospels.
The gospel for our Mass today is a mere five verses long; however, to focus on a key point requires an examination of the entire chapter six. Again, it is essential to stress the discipline of exegesis, which involves examining the text both before and after the selected passage. Our focus today will be primarily on vv. 19-21:
Jesus said to his disciples:
“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
There is a key point that Jesus makes three times leading up to this conclusion of chapter six. When you do a good deed for the show of it to gain honor, love, prestige, or any earthly reward, that is the reward you have received for that act. Jesus instructs us about this regarding almsgiving (v.2), prayer (v.5), and fasting (v.17), and teaches us, “Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward.”
One issue when debating with Protestants on biblical exegesis, especially Evangelicals, is what I call their ‘English Fundamentalism’. There is an idea in their theology that anyone can interpret the plain meaning of the text without considering 1st-century Palestinian culture or the original language of the text itself. Jesus didn’t invent the treasury imagery he uses in the Synoptic Gospels. Jesus uses an image that was common to the Rabbinic traditions of his time. Gary A. Anderson, in his book, Charity, explains a particular Rabbinic tradition from Tosephta Peah 4.18:
“Consider, for example, a well-known tradition about King Munbaz, a man from Adiabene who converted to Judaism and happened to be a rough contemporary of Jesus. During a terrible famine, he distributed a good portion of his wealth to those in need. According to a rabbinic tradition, he explained himself thus: My [non-Jewish] fathers gathered treasures for themselves down below, but I have gathered treasure up above. My fathers have gathered treasures in a place over which the human hand has power, but I have gathered treasures in a place where no human hand has power.”1
Anderson notes the idea of “storing heavenly treasure” using the same cognate of the verb that Matthew used in a non-canonical text, known as the Psalms of Solomon, during Israel’s 2nd Temple period. Anderson cites the text, “Our works are in the choosing and power of our soul, and in your righteousness you visit human beings. The one who practices righteousness stores up life for himself with the Lord, and the one who practices injustice is responsible for the destruction of his soul, for the judgments of the Lord are in righteousness for each man and household. (9:4–5).”2
Naturally, the point within Jesus’ teaching found in the Gospels is the long-standing Jewish view that Jesus incorporates the meritorious value of our good actions toward our sanctification and salvation. Our contextual analysis of the gospel reveals a comprehensive understanding of how Jesus concludes the gospel passage within the Catholic theological framework, or, more accurately, Jesus' perspective.
When we love others for the sake of the good of another, for the sake of the glory of God, then we cooperate with God’s mission in the world—His Missio Dei. Let us put good things in our bodies, whether material or, more importantly, spiritual. Make sure to make use of the economy of the sacraments for your salvation, so that grace may be infused into your soul, that God may do His work through you.
Gary A. Anderson, Charity (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2013), 127.
Ibid, 128.
In prayer some decades ago, I was advised that every act of true charity embodies within it the perfect selflessness of Christ and that a more perfect charity expects expects no reward at all, not even a spiritual reward, and that it's only hope for reward is possible observation of the pleasure of God as it is exercised. In addition I was able to observe that true charity is no mere state or the exercise of a disposition of human virtue that one can simply choose to employ. True charity originates and rises from within the very nature and the Person of God. Charity is the evidence and the expression in all created beings who live in surrender to God, that He has become resident within them. In effect, we have disposed ourselves to embodiment of the living "substance" of God that true charity is. When this expression is allowed to become one that is utterly selfless in its expression and in its expectation of any reward, even of possible observation of the pleasure of God, it has then become perfect. The result of these dispositions is that true and lasting treasure, the "treasure" of Heaven is imparted to us and awaits only our arrival there. I think few on earth understand that when we adopt the constructs of participation in our impending Sainthood while here on earth, we can become beneficiaries to that very treasure even now. I certainly have. Remember that the single salient activity in Heaven of all who reside there is that they each attend and adore God incessantly. When we surrender to God to become participants in our unique individual Sainthood, it is in this state, engaged at the feet of our Father, that we then become participants.
We are enabled in storing up treasure in Heaven, and as well from Heaven, by our unqualified surrender to God here on earth that binds us incessantly in a communion with Him which actually resides in Heaven. Once our communion with God is initiated and we have become irrevocably bound to One Another, the very life and Presence of God to whom we have now become consummately at risk, becomes established and domiciled within us. A full participation in the state and the disposition of our utterly unique Sainthood in Heaven begins at the moment our unqualified surrender, tendered to God, occurs.
These are just a few observations encountered in my life with God I have no idea how any of this squares with current theological conviction or a more astute understanding of Scripture. Just sayin' I guess,
Amen!