By Fr. Glenn Jones:

People certainly have varying ideas of what is truly valuable these days. Most people would point to family and friends first of all, I think, for what is life without love and fellowship, which we crave above all other things?

After all, wealth makes one comfortable and may enable many worldly advantages, but with it often come false friends, treachery, theft, etc. Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a fatted ox and hatred with it.” (Proverbs 15:17), and “Wakefulness over wealth wastes away one’s flesh, and anxiety about it removes sleep.” (Sirach 31:1)—both of these we understand all too well. And we certainly know that: “Better off is a poor man who is well and strong in constitution than a rich man who is severely afflicted in body,” (Sirach 30:14), applicable when the rich succumb to temptations of excess in food, drink and drugs.

Power, too, of course, is much prized, yet often by those from whom it would be much better for everyone else if it had been withheld! “Power corrupts”, and those who are corrupt are drawn to it, to the sorrow and ruin of many. For extreme examples we recall Hitler and Stalin, who were essentially nobodies in their early years and yet became some of the most brutal dictators in all history. Power can lead to disdain even of the very lives of the hoi polloi over whom they rule in truest Machiavellian style.

So many live solely material goals—much like Denzel Washington’s character in “American Gangster”: “If you ain’t somebody, then you’re nobody.” Ah, but the fleetingness of such things, and of life itself. The grave separates us from all such things: wealth, beauty, and power.

Well, actually … maybe immediate physical power, but not the power of ideas. In these years, centuries and even millennia after their deaths, the world is still very much guided by those who sought wisdom—influential philosophers and religious leaders—Socrates and Plato and Aristotle, the Buddha, Confucius, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, Muhammad, Kant and Nietzsche, MLK, Jr., and many more who truly made a lasting mark in the minds of humanity, And, of course, the absolute favorite and sure path for Christians!—Jesus of Nazareth. Few of these had material power and wealth, but rather sought the greater wealth of wisdom and truth.

Many seek “immortality” by reputation—becoming the best (or worst) among humanity. Scientists seek to make the “big” discovery, businessmen and entrepreneurs, the “big play”. Writers, the unforgettable novel. But, really … what are the chances of such, especially with billions of people—past, present and future—to contend with? I often am in older cemeteries and see the untended graves, the broken headstones … lives’ novels now long over, the book closed and forgotten. For a few decades we might be remembered … but memories fade, and those who never knew us see just a name on a photo in a drawer, or in some tucked away file on a computer.

So … what’s the point? What lasts? Coming to the rescue, we remember St. Paul writing so eloquently: “Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away … faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:8,13)

Love is why the closeness of family … the longing for togetherness … the tears at funerals. Even the hardest criminals often have their cells festooned with pictures of their loved ones—their reason to go on living and enduring—asking for prayers for them. But nowadays I see statistics about plummeting birth rates, and can’t but wonder about coming dearth of love—emptiness and loneliness that will be experienced as people decline and die alone, forgotten. Death is scary enough, but to be forlorn—without kith or kin—for comfort—has to be one of the worst feelings of loneliness.

Remember Jesus’ parable of the treasure in the field and the pearl of great price for which the discoverers readily gave up all else; nothing else was of remotely comparable value. Jesus, of course, uses analogy to emphasize that the Kingdom of Heaven is that incomparable prize we seek. Why hold to that which deprives of what is truly desired? Why trade treasure for slugs? For we read: “God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” (1 John 4:16), and since we long for love above all things, we long for God, whether we realize it or not, whether we believe in Him or not. God is the fountain in the arid desert of life—the source of every bit of love we receive, and which alone slakes our desperate thirst for life’s true meaning.

Why am I? Why am I here? Well, to counter Denzel’s quote, nobody is “nobody” to God; indeed, each person “unique, and unrepeatable, someone thought of and chosen from eternity, someone called and identified by name.” (Pope John Paul II) So to this perennial question the Christian answers: “God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength. He calls together all men … into the unity of his family, the Church. To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer and Savior. In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, v. 1).

This is what is solely of true and lasting, indeed eternal, value, and why Christians proclaim to the world with Joshua: “… if you be unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom [or what] you will serve … but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord!” (Joshua 24:15)

Editor’s note: Rev. Glenn Jones is the Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe and former pastor of Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church in Los Alamos.