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Readings for Today. Listen to our other podcasts.
A fat heart or a life of meaning? Today’s readings provide the choice we all need to make.
The choice for meaning
I know that I need to look at my interior life when I feel tempted to look at advertisements. The purpose of advertisements, of course, is to convince us to buy often what we don’t need. At least that’s the way it is with me.
And I know that when that comes upon me, I need to examine my life because what it means is I’m looking for some kind of immediate comfort rather than the long-lasting peace of the Lord.
The readings today remind us of the challenges that everyone faces in their life. One of my favorite books, which I would encourage everyone to read, it’s quite small but it’s quite powerful, is Man’s Search for Meaning by Dr. Viktor Frankl. I’m a huge fan. He wrote it some time ago, he’s deceased, but he survived the concentration camps and part of the book comes from his experiences there to determine who was able to weather the concentration camp and who was not.
Some immediately gave up, but others seemed to be able to survive. Now I’m not saying that there wasn’t a lot of trauma and difficulty. Of course there was. This was a horrific chapter in human existence. But what I am saying is that he discovered, really I think, what the drive of every human being is. And he called it the will to meaning. The will to meaning.
In the first reading, the people that are described, who apparently are quite wealthy, don’t know what life means. They look to their riches, they look to their wealth, but it fails to satisfy in the long run. In the gospel, Jesus contrasts this with the person who generously provides just a cup of water to someone who’s a disciple. Meaning in our life cannot come from money.
I’ve had the occasion in my life to encounter many very wealthy people who were also very miserable with life and circumstance. One thing about the Christian life is that it is about, in our lives, how we see the world.
Perhaps you’ve had the feeling or the hope that some great windfall would behold you by arriving in the mail. Sometimes I think, oh my gosh, what would happen if I win the lottery? Of course, I’m not going to win the lottery because I rarely play, so that’s kind of a problem. But I do think to myself, what’s the first thing that would come to mind if I did win the lottery? Where is my heart? Has it been fattened for my own destruction? Or has it been stretched to grow in love and to find meaning in the way in which we live.
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