 It's always appropriate to have a friar preach on treasure. So, I don't have a lot to say. I don't have a lot of treasure. I was thinking about that. Yeah, it just, obviously as a friar, I don't have a lot of treasure. But even in that, like every year, one of the advantages of being transferred and being moved is you can get rid of stuff. So, you know, every year, every few years when I've been moved recently, you just kind of go through stuff and just get rid of it. This treasure that we try to maintain or try to build just doesn't work very well. I'm also not a very sentimental, like things don't matter a lot to me. So, like just collecting a bunch of things isn't something that's that important to me. My mother recently was going through, they had moved some of their storage and they found these big boxes and they were things of mine that I had growing up and just mementos, things from high school, diplomas, these kinds of things. And she goes, you know, Dave, how do you want us to mail this to you? How do you want me to get this to you? And I said, I don't. And she goes, well, I can't just throw it away. It's like, well, it looks like that's your issue then, mom. So, you're either going to hold on to it before I don't know or you're going to throw it away because I don't want it. But it's really important. I said it might be important to you. It's not as important to me. But I was thinking about that. What is those treasures, those things that are important to me? Because there are some things. One of them is an orange blanket. It sounds really kind of crazy. I've mentioned over the years that my mom's got MS. And one of the things that she did for each of us kids is there was sometimes when she was doing better that my mom could crochet and she would crochet and she would go through these phases of crocheting, scarfs and all these kinds of things for us. And with each one of the kids, she provided us an opportunity to say, you go pick out the yarn and I'll make you an afghan. So it was 1977, it would have been about 1977, 1978 when the Denver Broncos were at the peak, right? And went to the Super Bowl that year, they lost. They also went to the next year and they lost. They went four times and they lost. But I'm over that. The Lord has healed me last night. You're intervening that, right? So I went and I got this orange yarn. It's just ugly, just awful orange yarn. I said, mom, that's what I want my afghan. She goes, are you serious? It glows at night, right? But my mom, it was an act of love. I mean, there were times that she would have to be able to put it aside and not be able to pick it up because of her MS for months, sometimes years. So there's this orange afghan that's in my friary that I hope that Moz don't get in that and not that. My father was an athlete at Notre Dame. He was a monogram member. And I got my dad's jacket, his monogram jacket that he got from Notre Dame. That's pretty special. I would rather that Moz not go and ruin that. The other thing I was thinking is there's a small, I've got a small, it's a little oil lamp that I've had since I've been at Notre Dame. It sits next to my chair before I pray. Late at night, hundreds of times, over the thousands of times over the years. I've lit that lamp and just sat quietly still. That's pretty special. That's the treasure, I suppose. But I found myself reflecting and praying like where your treasure is, that there your heart will be. Store not up in treasures on earth, but treasures in heaven. It's been the last couple of days praying about that and thinking about that. What does that look like? What is this treasure in heaven that we're supposed to store up? The Lord gave me three images as I was praying through that. Kind of these three storage rooms, I suppose, treasure rooms. The first one that He brought me into, I looked around and in it there were all the things of prayer, mass, and Eucharist. And I just found myself in that room just taking up and holding these things, the scripture, preparing this, preparing, praying through the scriptures as I'm preparing for mass. That's the treasure that we should probably try to store up. I was just as I was praying and again in this room it was the various monstrances over the last 30 years, 35 years that I've sat and kneeled and prayed in front of. Those images. You know some of the hosts that you can get that are stamped, right? They've got like the Lamb of God. I think it's all kind of cheesy myself. That's just a personal opinion, right? And the other people are like, oh, but this, all these different hosts that we've been able to consecrate or receive over the years were part of this treasure. There was a rosary there. There were tabernacles. There was this little candle, this oil lamp that I spoke of. This place of prayer. The Eucharist and adoration. I remember when I was transferred one time somebody came up to me and they said, I can't believe you're being transferred. It was so difficult. What are you going to do? And it just struck me that they were much more concerned about it than I was. And I said to them, my provincial, he didn't say I have to quit praying. He didn't say that I couldn't have Eucharistic adoration anymore. He didn't say that I couldn't celebrate Mass. He just asked me to do that somewhere different in a different place. But those things, all of those things, the Word and the adoration and prayer and Eucharist, that all goes wherever. Brothers, it seems to me, the heart of this treasure. It's got to be this. It's got to be prayer. It's got to be the spiritual life. It's got to be Eucharist. And I don't know what your life is like, but as a priest especially, I can't imagine you not celebrating Mass every day. Like when I look at my day, there's a few things that I know. There's actually one thing that I know that I'm going to do. Honestly, that I know for sure in any given day. But if the scriptures has store of treasure, and it seems to me this is the place that we store that up. Amen? So the second room is I was praying that the Lord brought me into, again, like these treasury rooms. I don't know how I can exactly explain what I was seeing, what I was experiencing, but the second room I walk in and there was cross. The cross was there. And it's really blocked to those who do not believe. But to those who believe it's the glory of God. This treasure in heaven and it seems to me that there's something profoundly beautiful about this conversion that takes place in our life, that the cross is no longer something we do everything we can to get away from or resist, but we actually come to the place that it's our treasure. At the cross, as I was praying through this image, was our Blessed Mother and John. Those who were faithful were at the cross. My treasure. But in this room with this booty and the treasure and all of that there was faces and memories of the cross. There were tombstones, funerals, words like cancer, divorce, isolation, this place of all of the suffering, the desert, all of the things and the more some of you are going the older I get, right? I promised I would never say that, right? But the older I get it always brings us back. It always brings us back. Talking to my mom recently who's obviously lost her son and her husband in the last 13 months and she's saying I didn't think the younger would be like this. I mean things taken away from her. Independence because I just didn't think it was going to be so hard. But isn't that if we can begin to see that that's the treasure, right? That there's a way of encountering and engaging Jesus there at that place. There's a quote by Yves Congare. He said there are places in our heart that don't exist and into it suffer in the center so that they may. Within the midst of the cross and the midst of that room and all these that Jesus reveals himself to us there. It becomes our treasure. I mean it seems to me that we handle desolation and we handle suffering and we handle the desert and we handle the cross profoundly different if we in fact see that that's our treasure there. That's our treasure. We ought not feel like well I just want to get more and more of that treasure, right? Because across life we don't have to go looking for it. It'll find us. It'll find us. Especially especially if we're willing to minister in vulnerability. That we actually enter into the people that we minister. If we enter into their suffering and their brokenness and their shame. We're not afraid of going and being a part of that. And then the grace and the beauty is that God actually transforms that and it becomes for us. Amen? So the third room that since this third place that the Lord brought me into it it was what I imagine the tomb of Jesus looked like. There was a stone that was rolled away and there was a woman there who I imagined was Mary Magdalene. And one of the things I love about Pope Francis is that he made her day a feast. I think actually a solemnity now. There's something profoundly beautiful about Mary Magdalene who at the death of Jesus all she wanted to be was where he was. So she goes to the tomb early in the morning. So the image that the Lord brought me to the third image was there. Mary Magdalene was there and the stone was rolled away. And there was this light, just this illuminating light coming from this tomb. And I walk in and it was so light that it was hard to see anything and it was hard to recognize. But I become accustomed to that light and I began to see and I was looking around this tomb that I expected to be empty but it was all the things from the other treasuries. It was all the things of the liturgy and the Eucharist and the mass and the adoration and the hosts and the scriptures and the rosaries. It was all of these things, a little candle that I prayed next to for 30 years was there and it was the cross and it was the tombs and it was the words and it was the diagnosis and it was all of that was now taken into this light that was in the empty tomb. Which is my treasure. Which is exactly what we're all rooting for right? This ultimately what we desire is that the Lord would bring us to this place where all of the brokenness and the struggle and the sinfulness and stuff is all taken up into Christ and the power of death and the power of hell and the power of the cross broken is no more powerful. That brothers is the place of our treasure. What the Lord was saying is these things while on earth are ultimately going to be what are going to take each one of us to our tomb to that empty tomb, to that place of final victory, the place of final glory. Because what was different about this last one was the first treasury the second treasury they were all contained and I remember there was this sense of movement through this to the glory of God where we encountered that one who had saved and rescued and redeemed us brothers let us be careful and cautious about gaining treasure on earth so as to be able to merit treasure in heaven. Amen.