Today’s Scriptures present us with a summons to ongoing conversion, to render an account of our hearts. Do we live in a way that befits the call we have received in baptism? Do we invest in the treasure that endures for eternal life? As we ponder these questions, I invite us to consider St. Lydia as a model of wholehearted response to God’s word. The Roman Catholic Church used to commemorate Lydia on August 3, but the most recent edition of the Roman Martyrologyfrom 2004 actually lists her feast day as May 20. This change was likely an ecumenical gesture to align Lydia’s celebration with when most Eastern Christians honor her.

Who was Lydia? We encounter her in Acts 16, when Paul and his companions travel to Philippi. On the Sabbath, they go outside the city gate along the river to where a group of women are gathered for prayer (Acts 16:13). They sit and speak with the women, one of whom is identified as “Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth, from the city of Thyatira, a worshiper of God” (Acts 16:14). That Lydia is a “worshiper of God” is significant. “God-fearers” were Gentiles who expressed reverence for the one God of Israel but did not formally convert to Judaism. Lydia was a religious seeker. But why? What prompted her quest?

Like Qoheleth in our first reading from Ecclesiastes, perhaps Lydia wondered about the purpose of human life, given “all the toil and anxiety of heart” that comes from “labor[ing] under the sun” (Eccl 2:22). Lydia’s work as a dealer in purple cloth was likely profitable. She probably had not only a discerning eye for color and texture, for beauty and value, but also the business acumen to work with people, to judge a good deal from a bad deal. Perhaps she had learned the hard way that it is easy to be deceived, making it difficult to be trusting and generous. Maybe she knew all too well how easy it is to get sucked into living for oneself, what our second reading from the Letter to the Colossians calls “the greed that is idolatry” (Col 3:5).

Qoheleth remarks on the apparent futility of human life: “all things are vanity” (Eccl 1:2). Because all things pass away, no lasting profit or gain is possible. Regardless of how hard one works, both the wise and the foolish meet the same fate—death (Eccl 2:14-16). As the psalmist describes, we are “like the changing grass, which at dawn springs up anew, but by evening wilts and fades” (Ps 90:3, 5-6). What, then, is the meaning of life? If we all die in the end, does it really matter how we live? Does anything endure?

Perhaps Lydia asked these questions after experiencing the death of a loved one that turned her world upside down. Faced with the transience of human life, maybe she found herself drawn to contemplate with humility and awe the God for whom, as the psalmist says, “a thousand years are as yesterday,” the God who both creates and turns us “back to dust” (Ps 90:2-6). Perhaps Lydia and the other women gathered alongside the river prayed with the psalmist, “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain wisdom of heart…. Prosper the work of our hands!” (Ps 90:12, 17).

But in listening to Paul and his companions, Lydia must have perceived that there was something more to life than using her time well, living with gratitude, and doing business honestly and justly to honor God the Creator. From Paul, she heard that the Creator God is also the redeeming God who raised Jesus from the dead, that in Jesus, God has inaugurated the new creation—the Spirit poured out upon all flesh. It is the vision presented in Colossians of a sanctified humanity beyond societal divisions—where “Christ is all and in all” (Col 3:11). There really is a lasting treasure, a reality that endures, a future to hope for beyond death—a future with God!

The narrator tells us that as Lydia listens, “the Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what Paul was saying” (Acts 16:14). Recall today’s psalm response: “If today you hear God’s voice, harden not your hearts” (cf. Ps 95:7-8). Lydia responds immediately to God’s word with her whole heart: she and her household are baptized, and she offers hospitality to Paul and his companions at her home, which becomes a gathering place for the Christian community (Acts 16:15, 40).

Through baptism, Lydia came to know life in Christ and the hope of sharing in his glory, treasure infinitely more valuable than the purple cloth she traded. She heeded Jesus’s warning in today’s Gospel reading from Luke: “Take care to guard against all greed, for though one may be rich, one’s life does not consist of possessions” (Lk 12:15). Jesus tells a parable about a rich man who stores up his harvest, but what does it matter when death comes? Such a one is “not rich in what matters to God” (Lk 12:21). Lydia took to heart the reality of her baptism; as Colossians states: “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3). Thinking of “what is above”—Christ—Lydia used her possessions to support the mission of the church, investing in a far more lasting profit (Col 3:1-2).

Perhaps we might ask ourselves this question: Of what kind of cloth are we made? Do we, like Lydia, know the value of our baptismal garment? In taking off the old self and putting on the new self, we undergo a different kind of “dyeing.” Our being clothed with Christ is far more permanent and precious than any dye. We know this from those witnesses who, as the Book of Revelation says, “have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Rev 7:14). May the Lord “prosper the work of our hands” in witnessing to this baptismal cloth, testifying to that future with God where “Christ is all and in all” (Ps 90:17; Col 3:11).