Church Fathers, Day 219: St. John Chrysostom tells us to invest in heaven

Invest in heaven

Are you asking me to give my money away for nothing? No, answers St. John Chrysostom: I’m asking you to invest it at the highest possible rate of interest.

“But what do you want me to do?” someone says. “Do you want me to give someone else all this money I’ve saved, which is useful to me, and demand no return?”

Far from it! I don’t say that at all. In fact, I earnestly desire that you should have a return—and not a paltry or tiny one, but far greater. In return for gold, I want you to receive heaven for your interest.

So why shut yourself up in poverty, crawling along on earth, and demand­ing little for great? This is the part of one who doesn’t know how to be rich. For when God, in return for a little money, is promising you the good things that are in heaven, and you say, “Don’t give me heaven, but instead of heaven give me gold that perishes”—obviously you want to keep living in poverty!

Surely whoever wants wealth and abundance will choose things that last rather than things that perish, the inexhaustible rather than what wastes away, much rather than little, incorruptible rather than corruptible. Then the other sort will follow as well. Whoever seeks earth before heaven will certainly lose earth as well, but whoever prefers heaven to earth will enjoy both to the highest degree.

So that this may be the case with us, let us despise everything here, and choose the good things to come. Thus we’ll get both the one and the other, by the grace and love for humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ.

–St. John Chrysostom, Homily 5 on Matthew, 9

IN GOD’S PRESENCE, CONSIDER . . .

Where is my money invested?

Could I afford to put a little more away in eternal investments?

CLOSING PRAYER

Lord, help me grow to be like you, and accept and make holy the unworthy gifts I bring.

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