By Michael Pakaluk

A question: when the Prefect of Rome in 258 demanded that St. Lawrence hand over the treasures of the Church (see here), had the saint thought about his reply already, or did he improvise it on the spot? Did he live his life regularly thinking that "poor persons are the Church's treasures" or were those treasures, as it were, not recognized even by him, until - in a moment of crisis - he was inspired to see them for what they were?

I want to ask Christians today, similarly, what is the treasure of your Christian life? What constitutes the wealth acquired by you through a life of service in the Kingdom of God? If you had sense, you wouldn't turn to your 401K, Cybertruck, or house in Aspen. You might more sensibly refer to your spouse, children, and grandchildren.

Maybe you would add your godchildren, or think of friends who became Christians or Catholics because of you. If you were in any way accomplished, you might think too of your achievements "for the glory of God" - heroism in battle, generosity in going through pregnancies, how you handled an important legal case, your excellence in your line of work, and so on.

But in which of these would a Christian's true wealth most consist?

Visible accomplishments reveal sharply the question I wish to raise here. You have heard of the 10,000-hour rule. A person typically becomes expert in something through devoting 10,000 solid hours of practicing it, which works out to about 3 hours a day for 10 years. Probably the rule needs to be tripled for noteworthy accomplishments: since, once you become an expert, you need to practice your craft for let us suppose 6 hours a day for another 10 years to become capable of exceptional achievement.

Well, the exact numbers are not important. I simply want to draw your attention to the great disproportion between the unseen, unglamorous, unheralded hours of practice - many thousands of them - and the hours of visible, celebrated achievement (maybe a few dozen). This disproportion seems built into the human condition.

Suppose that, as a Christian, while you were practicing you were also offering up those hours to God. Before you started practicing, and after you finished, you said a prayer. At daily Mass, you united your practice with the Eucharistic sacrifice, in intention. In daily prayer, you asked God for illumination and grace in figuring out how to improve: he was your "collaborator" throughout. Then you would have "booked" 30,000 hours of service to God.

To help clarify, suppose I asked a Christian athlete where his true wealth was, as a Christian, as regards his sport? Would it consist in how he glorified God in the championship - perhaps when he even pointed to the sky on television and gave credit to God - or would it be in those thousands of hours of self-abnegating, unseen practice? Which answer would be in the spirit of St. Lawrence?

The point can be generalized. Take husband and wife. Where is their true wealth as Christians in their dealings with each other? No doubt some romantic gesture that they long remember counts as wealth - the diamond studs, for instance, which he saved up for and surprised her with (wealth to him more than to her). Or her saying "yes," which never stops amazing him. But then as Golde sings in Fiddler there are the quiet deeds between them, which stand to such outstanding romantic gestures at least in a proportion of 10,000 to 1: "For twenty-five years I've washed your clothes/ Cooked your meals, cleaned your house/ Given you children, milked your cow."

"The poor you will always have with you." (Matthew 26:11) The beauty of these humble deeds is that they are always available. There is nothing fraught about them.

You practice 30,000 hours and then you lose the championship? No matter, your riches consisted in your "poor" deeds.

You are a craftsman who carefully completed the scrollwork and ornamentation on the high ceiling of a church which no one ever looks up to see, taking it for grante...