As I took time to reflect on today’s Gospel message, my thoughts drifted to an earlier time, when a younger version of me, just graduating college, sought those things in life that were to bring me happiness.  A good job, a nice car, a house - these were all things to attain to bring me joy.  And as I began to acquire these things, I recall desiring that next thing that would make me happy.  My life was a constant chase.  In that chase, I don’t know that any of those things every resulted in any kind of meaningful, lasting joy.

Jesus’s lesson today turns typical notions of joy on their head.  In the readings, we hear Luke recount the time that seventy-two disciples gathered around Jesus, basking in the joy of their newfound powers that gave them dominion over serpents and scorpions.  Jesus stated “do not rejoice because the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice because your names are written in heaven.”  The way that Jesus frames how we rejoice reminds us that there is a greater reward, and that we need to keep that in perspective, even as we do good works in His name.

These days, in a materialistic world where the cultural norm is to reject the eternal reward that Jesus mentions, it is all too easy to embrace a disordered view of what brings joy.  As it was for that younger version of me, so too is it for many.  What complicates things is that even good deeds can bring about a disordered perspective of joy if the focus is not in the right place.

So, as we turn our attention to those things that make us happy, let us take time to reflect on the greater reward - that like the seventy-two disciples in today’s reading, our eyes too are blessed to see that our names are written in heaven.