Twenty-sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Tone 1; The Holy Martyr Paramon (249-51), the Holy Martyr Philomenus (270-75); Our Father Acacius, of Whom Testimony is Found in the Ladder of Divine Ascent
Ephesians 5:9-19; Luke 12:16-21
Nativity Fast.
Read Ephesians 5:9-19
Have you ever heard the expression “his heart just wasn’t in it?” Or maybe you have experienced a situation where you knew that “in your heart of hearts” you just were not committed. The Fathers of our faith knew that the heart was not just a muscle which pumped blood throughout the body, but a way of explaining the totality of the person, their inner being. Our Lord tells us that “where our heart is, there our treasure will be also.”
In his book, Feminine Faces, Clovis Chappel wrote that when the Roman city of Pompeii was being excavated, the body of a woman was found mummified by the volcanic ashes of Mount Vesuvius. Her position told a tragic story. Her feet pointed toward the city gate, but her outstretched arms and fingers were straining for something that lay behind her. The treasure for which she was grasping was a bag of pearls. Chappel said, “Though death was hard at her heels, and life was beckoning to her beyond the city gates, she could not shake off their spell… But it was not the eruption of Vesuvius that made her love pearls more than life. It only froze her in this attitude of greed.”
St. Paul reminds in our reading from Ephesians today that we must guard our heart from the foolishness of following our own pleasures in this world, but instead to focus on the wisdom and will of the Lord. The priorities and agendas of this world ultimately do not satisfy, and Christ has shown us a new and better way.
A Christian is called to walk in the light of the Lord, not the darkness of this world.
Do you need some spiritual “open-heart surgery?” Have you given yourself away to any of the false promises the world has to offer? Remember that our Lord has already entrusted to us the Pearl of Great Price. Let us not be foolish enough to return to the lies of the world to find our ultimate treasure, but to rejoice in the Lord with all our heart!