[media presentation below] GospelThink Friday, June 17 MATTHEW 6:19-23 I want to be your treasure and your light. Prayerthoughts a. Because of my human nature, I tend to collect the things—treasures—of earth. Do I    spend too much time and energy on those things? Perhaps I should give some things to the poor. b. I am involved in the treasures of heaven right now as I pray. Do I place trust in the Lord even as I do what I have chosen as my life’s work? c. It is a significant statement from the Lord: “Where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.” Do I show by my actions that I have chosen treasure in heaven as a true guide for me? d. I should be spending time on making the eye sound, that is on the teaching of Jesus, because if I do, then there will be no darkness in my life. Which teaching of Jesus should be most important to me as I live right now? e. My prayerthoughts…   Today, I will read 2 Kings, chapter 11, and write an important thought from it. Some Thoughts on the Liturgy  OUR GENERAL DIRECTION  + The Gospel continues to consider Matthew’s arrangement of Jesus’ principal doctrines in the Sermon on the Mount          – after six moral principles, and the three religious acts of Old Testament Israelites, Matthew and Jesus go into a section on how to love God and people better  + It is an interesting first reading as we talk about how to love God more          – we see what love is up against and the evil in the world                   – this time in the person of another woman like Jezebel, Ahab’s wife                            – this person is named Athaliah          – the way the evil is taken care of is by force, often the way the Old Testament explains a situation                   – but extrapolating all the killing, etc.                            – the story is one to be imitated in that good overcomes evil   + Two of the images of the way good is to overcome evil is given to us in the Gospel, both saying basically the same thing          – 1 – the way to become good people is to concentrate on heavenly treasure, not earthly treasure          – 2 – the way to become good is to accept a fundamental option or a fundamental movement toward God who is light  + The question that the liturgy puts for our consideration today probably revolves around the idea of the general direction of our lives which should be toward the good and not evil          – as we are thinking of that, may I suggest three things to consider:          – 1 – evil                   – as is illustrated in the first reading, there is evil in the world, a lot of it                            – we see it, we feel it                                     – people refusing to get along, people refusing to carry through on the Christian ideals                            – fight it everywhere you see it          – 2 – selfishness                   – that which causes the evil in our world                            – we want what we want                            – look at the motivation of our actions, why we do the things we do                                     – keep studying the Gospels to see how well we are doing with our life in a spiritual sense as well          – and 3 – make it a habit to give to each other                 – I’m really convinced that the basis of the spiritual life lies in how we are giving to one another                            – we can’t be evil if we are giving without expecting anything in return                            – we can’t be selfish if we really want to give to other people  + The Lord’s image of where our treasure is and the darkness that can overcome the light is important to consider          – and I suggest we consider those images in light of our involvement with evil, selfishness and giving to others. MEDIA PRESENTATION Movie: “Moneyball” — beginning session TO THINK AS GOD DOES The Gospel MARK 8:31-33 [Jesus] began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and rise after three days. He spoke this openly. Then Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. At this he turned around and, looking at his disciples, rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”

Gospelthink: I tell you to try to think as God does which means that I should think in terms of love of others. Am I improving in my thinking?

The movie “Moneyball” begins with a quote from Mickey Mantle who said: “It is unbelievable how much you don’t know about a game you’ve been playing all your life.” He did not know about the business of baseball. The movie based on a true story as told in the book, “Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game” by Michael Lewis, is about the business of baseball. As he began the 2002 baseball season, Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics, realized that he had a serious problem if he did not want to lose. And losing, as he said, was something that he hated to do. He had lost his three best players due to free agency and did not have enough money to hire them back or to trade for better players. His staff was thinking the usual way of thinking in baseball circles: you bring up the players you have in the minor leagues or you trade. Billy was searching for another solution and after he met a young man by the name of Peter Brand who was only educated in economics, he began to think in a different mode.

Jesus gives us a distinction that we should take to heart. When it was clear that the future leader of his Apostles did not understand what he was doing, Jesus reminds him that he must begin to think as God thinks. Peter was thinking as human beings think: we become so taken up with our own feelings that we cannot possibly understand another point of view. Peter had to learn to think in a totally different way, and when he finally did, he began to see what God wanted in his life. Fundamentally, thinking the way God wants us to think involves objectivity. We must be able to view problems without our own personal feelings. Peter illustrates for us a pattern that we can study. As we are called to determine solutions to problems in our lives, our solutions may be prejudiced by our own set of circumstances. We may not be able to see beyond what we think. Billy Beane in the movie “Moneyball” was able to see beyond his set of circumstances. It meant that he had to change his own thinking first before he discovered a solution to winning baseball games. British author Phyllis Bottome once said that there are two ways of meeting difficulties: you alter the difficulties or you alter yourself meeting them. Much of the time the difficulties are going to remain, no matter what we do; then, if we want to find a solution, the way we approach them may have to change. Only when we are able to look at things in another light will we be able to see that there are answers to problems that at one time seemed unsolvable. We all have difficulties in life and we search for solutions. One of the solutions might be to look at the difficulties in a different way. It might mean that we have to begin thinking of them the way God thinks of them, and begin to see that our thinking may be part of the problem.

PRAYER Good and gracious God, our human natures tend to look at the problems of our lives from our own point of view. As your Son told his apostle Peter, help us learn to think as you think so that we will be able to solve our problems a little better. Be with us, we pray.

+++++ GUIDE FOR CLASSROOM PRESENTATION AND PERSONAL ENRICHMENT Theme: Sometimes we have to change our way of thinking about the problem in order to solve it.     DISCUSSION QUESTIONS (session: approximately 63 minutes) 1. What scene during this session of the movie is most striking? Why? 2. Jesus is speaking of the process of redemption in this passage. What is your understanding of Jesus’ redemption? See Catechism of the Catholic Church, second edition, numbers 599-618. 3. Give some instances in our world today in which you see people thinking as they think and not as God thinks. 4. Analysis: “$114,457,768 vs $39,722,689.” Should professional sports people be paid as much as they are? Yes or no and why? 5. Analysis: describe the character of Billy Beane as presented by the movie. 6. Dialogue analysis: Beane: “If we try to play like the Yankees in here, we will lose to the Yankees out there.” What does Billy mean? 7. What do you think of the approach to baseball that Peter Brand gave Billy Beane? 8. Analysis: the disagreement between General Manager Billy Beane and Manager Art Howe. What is the best way to solve this difficulty? 9. Analysis: Beane obviously has an “anger” problem. What is the best way to control “anger” in our lives today?