I’ve always been both inspired and disturbed by the Lord’s words in the gospel when he said, “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” This passage has always struck me as an immediate gut-check, no matter when I confront it. That makes sense, because the whole purpose of the phrase is to stop you in your tracks and get you to focus in that moment for a quick inventory and inquiry. Do you know where your heart is? And the answer, no matter how challenging or how discomforting or how disappointing, is always: Wherever your treasure is. In other words, your heart is in what you treasure most in your life.

Nothing brings this point home to me more than when I read the contemporary stories about the millennial generation, or the metrosexuals, or the crisis in modern masculinity, or even—I don’t know if you’ve heard about this new category—the “lumbersexuals.” Good grief! Regardless of the names, all of these stories invariably complain that the current generation can’t expect the same level of prosperity as previous generations, and all of them seem to declare the American Dream dead. To which my theological heart responds: So what?

Perhaps a truly fulfilled human life shouldn’t depend on comfort or prosperity, at least how these words are defined in a culture that has dismissed the workings of the soul and the spiritual maturity of an examined life. Perhaps this current generation will be richer in deeper realities, especially if we Orthodox choose to stop hiding our treasures from the modern world. But I digress. Look at our gospel lesson today and you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about. It’s in Luke 12:32-40.

The Lord said, “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give alms. Provide yourselves with purses that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Let your loins be girded and your lamps burning, and be like men who are awaiting for their master to come home from the marriage-feast, so that they may open to him at once when he comes and knocks.

“Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will gird himself and have them sit at table, and he will come and serve them. And if he comes in the second watch or in the third and finds them so, blessed are those servants. But know this, that if the householder had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have left his house to be broken into. You also must be ready, for the Son of man is coming at an unexpected hour.”

Wow. “Be like men”—yes!—men who are anticipating, men ready, men focused, men truly awake, and looking forward to being with their lord. That’s the kind of man I want to be, but how do you get such men like this? Well, look again at the passage. First, have a healthy disregard for your possessions. Don’t allow the things that you own to own you. Next, value external realities than temporary ones. Well, that takes a level of discernment about what’s eternal and what’s just temporary, doesn’t it? And finally, love first your Lord above all others, and with eager anticipation and wakefulness for his presence. Those kinds of men have their hearts in a place where true treasures exist and not in that fleeting fool’s gold that can be stolen or rot.

In an age where the clothes make the man, in an age where he who dies with the most toys wins, in an age that confuses pleasure with love and peace with the absence of conflict, we so desperately need men who will make a different choice and walk a different path, and we need those men now.

Today, where is your heart? Oh, I’m not asking where you think your heart ought to be. That’s too easy to fake. No, seriously, with an honest inventory of your loves, where is your heart? Look at what you treasure most in your life, and you can tell that place by looking at where you spend most of your time, your talents, and, yes, even your money. Find that spot, and you’ll find your heart. Is it where it needs to be? If not, perhaps it’s time to have a spiritual heart transplant to a better place. Perhaps it’s finally time to be Orthodox on purpose.