Holding On to What Matters

23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Wisdom 9:13-18b; Philemon 9-10, 12-17; Luke 14:25-33

Recently, archaeologists uncovered the remains of a woman in Pompeii, the ancient city buried by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD. The scientists found two things: First, the woman was early middle age and well-to-do; second, having come back home, she was clutching several gold coins and some jewelry. Imagine the moment: With ash and pumice raining down, she had a choice to make about what was most important. She made it, and it cost her literally everything.

As Jesus says in the gospel today, being his disciple also demands a choice and comes at a cost. On one side are all the things the world has to offer – wealth, comfort, convenience, relationships – and it hurts to let those go. On the other side stands the cross, and it hurts to take that up.

Still, my guess is that we like to see ourselves as always choosing the cross. I know I do. But this is the time to take a good, hard look at our actual behavior. So let’s ask – What happened the last time I was invited to put aside my own comfort or convenience and do something for someone else that required my time, money, and/or effort?

The plain, unvarnished truth is that too often I’ve resembled the woman in Pompeii, choosing what I want rather than what I should do. It’s true of all of us, and, as the book of Wisdom hints, we’ve had the problem for a long time. Since Adam, we’ve been tempted to decide what is good on our own. That hasn’t worked out well because we have no understanding of the eternal things of God. We need the Holy Spirit; without His gift of Wisdom, history shows that we’ll keep holding on to what cannot save us.

What does that Wisdom look like? In his letter to Philemon, Paul tells us: True Christian wisdom looks like the love that transforms relationships. When Paul asks Philemon to receive Onesimus not as a slave but as a brother, he shows that the cost of discipleship is seeing one another not through the lens of status or usefulness, but with the eyes of Christ.

There’s no evidence that Christ was known in Pompeii when Vesuvius erupted; in her ignorance, the wealthy woman held onto what she thought was important. But we have no such excuse. We know, as the Psalm says, that only the Lord is our refuge. His urging us to put him first isn’t a call to despise our families or abandon our lives, but to remember that only in him do we find the treasure worth holding on to. So today, let us ask ourselves: What am I holding on to like the woman in Pompeii, and what cross is Christ asking me to take up, so that I can follow him to where my true treasure lies – the life that never ends?

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