Father Don Dilg, CSC, died early in the morning of March 19 at the Holy Cross House on the University of Notre Dame campus. He died on the Feast of St. Joseph, the patron of the Brothers of the Holy Cross.
I am grieving his death. Perhaps my grief can be better understood if I tell you that I still remember and reflect upon a homily he gave in a darkened side chapel at Colorado College some thirty years ago.
The gospel reading was from Matthew. Jesus is preaching about treasure on earth and treasure in heaven. Jesus tells the disciples, “For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.” Father Don was a quiet man, a reflective man, and his homilies conformed to his manner. He asked us to consider Jesus’ wording in the passage and went on to paraphrase the gospel, saying, “Where your stuff is, there also will your heart be.” He suggested that we all would much prefer this altered construction, “For where your heart is, there also will your treasure be.” Because our hearts, he said, our thoughts, our feelings, are all in the right places. Just ask us how we feel about caring for the poor, feeding the hungry, turning the other cheek. Surely there, in our hearts, is where our treasure may be found. But that’s not what Jesus says. Jesus says to look to your treasure, your stuff, and you will find your heart. I had read and heard and studied that 6th chapter of Matthew many times. I had never thought of the distinction Jesus is making, locate the treasure and find the heart, but I’m pretty sure I had carried the backwards construction with me as, well, gospel.
We speak of the Word being broken open in the homily and we hope for that breaking. Perhaps we should fear it. That night the Word was broken open. I cannot forget and I do not think I am alone in remembering. Where is my treasure? Then, trembling, where is my heart?
The last time I saw Father Don he was our guest at supper. He wanted to say goodbye. My husband and I wanted to say thank you. He had noticed cognitive changes and had requested testing. The testing revealed early stages of dementia, so Father Don was returning to Notre Dame, to the Holy Cross House, where he would offer care while he could and, then, be cared for, among his fellow brothers and priests of the Holy Cross Order. I cannot know what the losses, those he was experiencing and those yet to come, meant to him. But he was, he said, hoping to find grace in the illness. I am confident he did, because grace had found him so long ago. Father Don had pledged his heart to Christ, giving up the treasure “moth and decay destroy and thieves break in and steal.” He chose to “store up treasures in heaven,” and there his heart was, and is, and remains, forever.
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