Where thy treasure is, there is thy heart also.
Love was and is the first and greatest monopolist. The heart and the heart's object tend to union; they are jealous of any intrusion that would interfere with that intimate union; they form a closed circle and a closed circuit, through which the current of affection passes from loving to loved. The monopoly is not formed and completed at once. According to the teaching of our Lord, there are three main stages in the process: the transfer of the heart, the transfer of the mind, the transfer of all the rest. When Christ issued His warning against avarice and against making riches the object of love, He said that where the treasure is there also shall be the heart; that the light within becomes darkness; that the lover of wealth becomes the slave of mammon. Heart, mind and all are consigned to the treasure, and the monopoly is formed. The soul is enticed, entranced, enslaved.
For each stage Christ uttered a warning. Before you are enticed, before you lose your heart, consider the contrast between the treasures of earth and Heaven. Moth, rust or thieves destroy the treasures of earth. Beauty has its enemies as well as wealth. Disease is the moth that preys upon the fair face; age will rust the charms of youth, and death is the thief that is no respecter of the handsome form. Moth will attack the king's robes and rust will eat up the king's crown, and usurpers and successors will steal away his throne. Wealth, beauty or power are not safety-deposits for human hearts. There is only one place in the universe where moth-balls, rust-removers and burglar-alarms are not needed If you are to be enticed into parting with your heart, our Lord warns you to put it where it will not be moth-eaten or devoured by rust or carried away by thieves. Since the heart will follow the treasures, it will suffer their fate. "Lay up for yourselves treasures in Heaven."
The wish is father to the thought, and has, it might be added, a very large family. Can the pale clerk cooped up in the city remain long at the seaside without being tanned? Can the Eskimo take off his furs without feeling cold? The questions would be easy in the kindergarten, and in the class of physics the scholars would say that heat radiates constantly until all the environment becomes of the same temperature. What, then, will become of a pale, anemic mind when subjected to a blazing heart, or a thinly clothed mind when exposed to an arctic heart? The mind assumes the temperature of the heart. To say that the mind is thermometer to the heart is only another way of saying that the wish is father to the thought.
If the heart is in the cash-box, the mind will not be in the poor-box. The heart, which means the will with its desires, will bring the thoughts its way. Enhancement will follow enticement, or, as our Lord puts it, entering His warning against this second stage of an illegal monopoly: "If the light that is within thee is darkness, the darkness itself how great shall it be!" His meaning is that the mind is the eye of the soul, and whatever blinds it, blinds the soul. Passion and enticement, in a word, the heart buried in treasures eclipses the sight of the mind. "There are no ugly loves," some one has said. The loving heart keeps the rarest cosmetics for the object of its love. The mind, therefore, is bewitched, infatuated, entranced. The doom pronounced by Christ against this second advance in the process of evil love, is darkness, and He hesitates to determine its intense blackness. "The darkness how great shall it be!"
The last stage of love's degradation is enslavement. "No man can serve two masters." This is the solemn warning of Christ. Where a man's heart and mind are, there also shall be the rest of him. There does not seem to be any place for bi-metalism in the human heart. The single standard rules there, the gold of God or the gold of earth. A river cannot flow north and south at the same time. When the heart s currents wear out a channel for themselves and develop an impetus, who will turn back the strong floods? Some saints have been known to have been in two places at once, bi-located, as it is called. The heart cannot be bi-located. If it is heaped over with gold and swathed in greenbacks, then it is not kneeling in sack-cloth and ashes before God. A man may have both riches and God, but he cannot serve both. He cannot belong to two nationalities, to two opposite political parties. If he is of the race of God and an upholder of the views of God, then he is not of the race of mammon and his adherent. It is, therefore, Christ's solemn warning to the enticed and infatuated heart, exhorting it to avoid enslavement: "You can not serve both God and mammon."
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We have gone down to the depths of love, or, to use a more proper term, to the depths of passion. Passion it is which should be called monopolist. Love deserves a term of more noble memories and associations. Love is a conqueror and a king. Having, then, studied the degradation of passion, we now ascend to the lofty, glorious heights of love. It was in eternity and in God that love was born. It had there infinite good and infinite beauty to contemplate and cling to, but even that seemed hardly enough for King Love, the Conqueror. It longed for other kingdoms. It would have another treasure also, and a heart to put with it, and love created both. "God so loved the world as to give His only Son." The Heart of Christ was the creation of Divine Love. We were the treasures of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. The souls of men that have their moths and rust and thieves, the souls of men with coldness, neglect and sin, were His treasures.
When Christ spoke of the passion of man, of man having his heart in his treasures, He spoke in a figurative way. It was a striking phrase which told that man always longs for his treasures. But when God created the Heart of Christ, it is the strict est truth to say that the Incarnation was the realization of the first stage of advancing love. Where Christ's soul-treasures were, there also His Heart really came to be. "My delight is to be with the sons of men."
In the Incarnation was the first victory of love; in the Passion was the second. If human passion has its infatuation, so, too, has true love. The way the blood of Christ's Heart throbbed to burst forth and be shed for us, His statement that He had a baptism of blood to be baptized with and was straitened until it should be accomplished, His eagerness which outstripped the Apostles on the way to Jerusalem, the lavishness with which He poured out blood where one drop would do, with which He permitted a host of varied torments when one pang of one pain had been enough for our salvation, these are all overwhelming proofs that His love had reached the heights of divine infatuation and merited to be termed the "folly of the Cross." The light of His Heart was not darkened, as the light of earthly passion grows dark in its second stage. His light was resplendent, and, adapting His words, we may say: "If the light that is in thee be splendor, the splendor itself how great shall it be!" One would imagine that with these two conquests, love had extended its kingdom far enough. But no! Holy love has its slavery too, if we may call it so, though it would be truer to call it consecration. Love has always been a uniter, but the Heart of Christ has revealed to us unheard-of powers under this aspect. His Heart leaped the chasm that yawned between Divinity and humanity, and united them. The Incarnation was the first wonderful union of love.
His Heart devised another union still with His treasures, the hearts of men, which staggers the belief and demands the testimony of God to establish its truth. What union is that? It is the union that He effects by His abiding presence in the Holy Eucharist and in Communion. No slave ever put himself so completely at the will of his master as Christ does for us. No love for men or for money brings about an actual physical incorporation between the heart and its object. The Heart of Christ, then, has attained to the highest heights of love. It enslaves Itself in the bonds of wine and wheat; It becomes our food and drink. It serves both God and men. Can love do more? The annihilation of the twenty-fifth of March, the "folly" of Good Friday, the daily consecration upon the altar, such are the triumphs and such is the climax of love's conquest in the Heart of Christ!