How do we attain eternal life?

For many years in Catholic schools, and Faith Formation Programs; students (myself included) were taught: “What must we do to gain the happiness of heaven? To gain the happiness of heaven we must know, love, and serve God in this world.” That’s it—just three things. If we put them into practice every day, we will attain eternal life.

The problem is that we often get distracted. We become focused on worldly things like fame, power, wealth, and/or material goods. We allow these distractions to take up more and more of our time and energy. God is then often pushed to the side. This is the reason the rich man in today’s gospel went away sad. His possessions were actually possessing him.

God is not demanding that we starve ourselves in order to feed others or that we give up our houses to shelter the homeless. He wants us to enjoy the gifts and blessings He has bestowed on us. But to spend eternity with Him in heaven, we must know, love, and serve Him. To do that “in this world”, we must know, love, and serve those in need by sharing with them our time, talents, and treasure.