Sunday Gospel Reflection

August 10, 2025 Cycle C
Luke 12:32-48
Reprinted by permission of the “Arlington Catholic Herald.”

Marshmallows and Eternal Life
by Fr. Richard A. Miserendino

Remember the “Marshmallow Experiment?”

It was a recorded study about delayed gratification involving kindergarteners and marshmallows. The kids were given a marshmallow and a choice: They could eat their one marshmallow now or wait a bit and get two marshmallows later. The videos are as comic as they are revealing. Some kids scarf down the marshmallow in seconds. Others agonize or nibble away. Only a few persevere to the end. The humanity of it is palpable: we need grace to reach the end-goal.

Our Gospel today also teaches lessons about delayed gratification and focusing on long-term goals. Jesus encourages his disciples to live differently, to “provide money bags for yourselves that do not wear out, an inexhaustible treasure in heaven that no thief can reach nor moth destroy.”

In other words, we’re invited to take stock of our lives and realize that we’re being offered something much better than a second marshmallow. In fact, eternal life is infinitely better than one single lifetime. More still: eternal life is not just endless extensions of this lifetime here and now; it’s enjoying the inexhaustible beauty and joy of God. So, rather than picturing a million marshmallows, it’s like a promise of the entirety of Wonka’s factory, the country it exists in, and even the whole planet. Simply — it’s a deal worth taking, one worth the sacrifice.

So, how do we do build up that treasure? How do we inherit this promise? We have to be careful about what we choose to love. “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be.” We become like what we love. If we choose to set our hearts on the things of God, we become more like him — eternal, true, good, beautiful. But if we set our hearts on passing things here and now, our hearts and our love will become a passing thing as well.

Yet, Christ shifts images to elaborate — to the parable of the master returning from a wedding feast and his attendant servants. Where does this fit in? By helping us weigh the value of the present marshmallow or life we have, in light of the promise to come. How so? The parable hints at our death and what our preparation can make of it in God’s grace.

Consider: The master is due to return at an hour we don’t know. He’s gone to the wedding feast — his own in fact. After all, Christ’s death and Resurrection inaugurates the “Wedding Feast of the Lamb,” a tremendous party and allegory for heaven. And yet, he’ll return to each of us servants at an unexpected hour. None of us know the hour of our own death. But wonder for a moment at how he will return: If we stay awake and ready, loins girt, the master brings the party home with him. Slices of cake, steaks and drinks, champagne bottles in hand. The master rewards those awake by inviting them into the life of heaven.

But we have to prioritize and sacrifice, to hold out for the longer good and even deny ourselves apparent goods now. It’s so easy to doze off, to nap a bit or get drunk (like the imprudent steward) and start to bank on easy goods here and now rather than the life in Christ to come. Worldly power, success, adulation, pleasure, and riches appear so much more solid and promising. The longer we wait, the more we want to scarf our marshmallow or nibble just a corner. We need something to remind us of the promise, some way to rouse ourselves.

Luckily, God has given us the grace to hold on, small helps and refreshers while we wait, which keep us awake. They’re things to set our hearts on here and now that contain Christ, so that we learn by fits and spurts to love him and prefer eternity to the world. First and foremost, they’re the sacraments, Scripture, and liturgy. Each Mass is a small participation in the wedding feast, a visit to heaven’s embassy to remind us of our homeland. And flowing from that habit of prayer, we have our loved ones, our neighbors and the poor. Loving them renders us vividly awake, if sometimes painfully so. In fact, if we remain awake in grace, the entire world can be transformed into a reminder of the promised kingdom to come. We ask for the grace to make it so, to take hold of, and treasure the promise of Christ, infinitely more than the sugar and fluff of the world and all its marshmallows. For those who do, Christ has offered the truly “just desserts” of eternal salvation.