The Gospel last week reminded us of our need to pray and so Jesus taught us the “Our Father.” Prayer is the breath of our soul. Prayer is the source of all true power—the power of love, for prayer puts us into contact with Love Itself—God, the Most Blessed Trinity, Father Son and Holy Spirit.

But we for our part must not only pray, but also pray with humility, persistence and trust, which comes from the realization that our heavenly Father loves us as His beloved Children—and so we are. He already knows what we need and so will only give us the good things we need, not necessarily the things we want, and at a time that is best. And for our prayers to be answered we need to forgive others, to show mercy if we are to receive Mercy.

The Line of the Our Father which says, “give us this day our daily Bread,” reveals the secret of prayer. Our “Daily Bread,” refers primarily to the Holy Eucharist (this is why for centuries in the Liturgy the priest look at the Holy Eucharist as he prayed the “Our Father”). The secret of the prayer of the saint, (that is, the one who is the most intimate friend of Jesus), is prayer in front of the tabernacle, prayer in front of the Holy Eucharist, Who is Jesus. The Eucharist is literally Jesus in His human body with His human heart. And the Human heart of Jesus is the way to the Father’s heart, and so the Father’s mercy and love.

Today the Holy Spirit wants to slap us out of our complacency. In the words that the Holy Spirit, Himself inspired, we hear that all things in this world are vanity. The wise man writing in our first reading is confronting the evils of this life- in particular suffering and death. And it all makes no sense to him. The author has long observed that both the good and the evil man will face suffering and death. This is why he can conclude that the pursuit of earthly things is vane. All is vanity.

What he is really trying to point out is that all the things of this earth that takes us away from an intimate relationship with God are worthless. All the things in this world will have to be left behind, including those we love—so why do we strive to make this world our permanent dwelling especially when it is such a vale of tears…in this life all must suffer both the good and the bad.

In this life then, we must strive for the higher things, the things of the Spirit; it is this Spirit that the Father wishes to give to those who ask (cf. Lk 11;13) Our earthly desires and passions will only take us away from our heavenly calling if we seek to fill them with created things instead of God. Comfort and pleasure, not to mention sinful pleasure, are obstacles for us to reach God if we set our hearts on them. Our hearts are made for God, not for things of this world, whether it be the riches of this world or the comfort or pleasures of this world. Only God can fulfill the deepest desires of our heart, of all hearts. And so our heart will never rest until they rest in our God alone.

It is this wisdom of our first reading that Jesus, in our Gospel today, uses in His advice to the man who approached Him. The death of a father had just taken place and the two sons were arguing over the inheritance. The reality of death confronts them, not only their father’s death but their own, and yet the one wants more of the inheritance than what he has received. He appeals to Jesus to intervene on his behalf- after all it’s only fair…This is a familiar situation. How many families are torn apart by fighting over the inheritance after a funeral (and sometimes even before the funeral, even before death)?

Jesus reads this man’s heart- and finds there, greed. In the face of his apparent suffering from injustice, this man thinks that more material goods will fill the void in his heart. And so Jesus responds to the request by telling him a parable. “Where is your treasure?” Jesus asks. Is it in the things of this world or the things of heaven…are you worried more about possessions than you are about your eternal salvation…are you worried more about money than obtaining the greatest of all treasures, Jesus Himself.

Jesus here want us to seriously reflect that this life is short and heaven is long, eternally long; are our hearts then really set on obtaining heaven...are we really taking our conversion and salvation seriously enough? Death comes for us all sooner or later (sometimes sooner), then judgment, then heaven or hell. Are we willing to risk living an eternity separated from the Love of our heavenly Father by taken it all for granted.

And so, Jesus again speaks of the necessity of prayer, the necessity of forming that intimate union with our God—our life does not consist of possessions, but in obtaining and possessing God and being possessed by Him.” If we instead make the object of this life the values and things of this world, our relationship with Christ, our lives will lose meaning. With our hearts set on things we slowly become stupefied in the sleep of indifference. And in this indifference we will no longer be able realize the greatest gift in this life is the Holy Eucharist which is Jesus, the way to the Father.

If we don’t center our lives on Jesus in the tabernacle we may think that we are living good Christian lives, but we are not living Holy Christian Lives. We will take our eternal salvation for granted; we will even presume every one goes to heaven when they do not. Away from the Holy Eucharist, and belief, adoration, trust and love in the God who is present in the flesh there, we will become slave to our senses—wanting only comfort and pleasure; we will think only of the things of earth and not of the things of heaven. We will want for only material things and so will become attached to the created things of this world instead of the Creator of the world. In the end, all will be vanity, for we will have sought in created things that which they can not give and we will lose hope, and all will be vanity.

Let us realized that if we are going to bear fruit in our lives, the fruit of salvation, for ourselves and others, then we must place our hearts often next to the tabernacle, which is under the cross. The Holy Eucharist is Divine; it is a Divine Person; it is Jesus; it is God. Therefore, the Holy Eucharist is not only the secret of prayer; it is the one and only door way to Our Father who Art in Heaven; in fact it is Heaven for it is Jesus—The Eucharist is then the greatest of all Treasures; it is where our heart should be; better yet, He is where our heart needs to be, now and forever.

Before the Holy Eucharist alone will we find the consolation we desire and the strength in the Lord we need to survive the trials of this life. There alone will we find fulfillment to the deepest desires of the human heart and reach a union forever with the God who is love.

Only Jesus in the Holy Eucharist knows how difficult it is for us to leave this world behind, only He knows our weakness, only He knows our heart. Let us turn to Him in a greater way at this Holy Mass. May we pray today for the grace of heeding the words of Jesus. Let us pray for the grace to discover that our hearts will only be satisfied with union with our Lord. May our Holy Communion today be an occasion where this union with our Lord grows and is perfected. May we be one with the Holy Eucharist and so one with Jesus and so begin to obtain heaven already here on earth.