Homily—18^th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

--Fr. Timothy W. Castor

You can’t take it with you.

That seems to be the message in today’s readings: You can’t take it with you. This life is very short; the life to come is forever. So, instead of acquiring wealth and surrounding ourselves with comfort in this life, we should strive to become "rich in what matters to God." Build up your account in heaven, because that’s where we hope to spend eternity.

In the first reading, Qoheleth examines this issue from a secular point of view (which is characteristic of Ecclesiastes). He points out the absurdity of the concept of inheritance: a man works all his life "with wisdom and knowledge and skill" to build his fortune. But when he dies, all his wealth is given to someone else (presumably his son or daughter) who hasn’t done a lick of work to earn it! The fact that the man has worked so hard for something so fleeting is, in Qoheleth’s opinion, sheer vanity. Yet, while he points out the absurdity of all this, he doesn’t provide a solution.

In the Gospel, we revisit this issue of inheritance, but this time, from the point of view of the inheritors—those who have benefited from someone else’s work. And here, our blessed Lord goes right to the heart of the problem, exposing that sinful attitude which often arises in these situations: the sinful attitude of greed. You see, whenever we confront the prospect of getting something for nothing, greed is ready to spring into action: I want more; and I want to do as little as possible to get it. All the sweepstakes, the lotteries, the casinos, the emails from someone claiming to be the son of a deposed prince in Nigeria, all these things hinge upon this mechanism of greed; and those who run these operations know it. Look at how they are advertised and promoted, and ask yourself: "What part of my character are they appealing to? My generosity? My charity? My sense of fair play? No—they’re appealing to my greed."

And to this our Lord replies: "Take care to guard against all greed, for though one may be rich, one’s life does not consist of possessions."

Jesus follows this teaching with the beautiful parable of the rich man with the good harvest. He builds bigger barns, stores up great wealth and settles down to a long, happy retirement only to discover that his life is at an end, and all the things he acquired here won’t do him a bit of good in the hereafter.

Listen to another story:

Many years ago, a great ocean liner struck a reef and began to take on water rapidly. The crew and passengers knew that there would be only minutes before the ship would sink, and so they quickly abandoned all their belongings and fled to the lifeboats. One man, however, said to himself, "This is my big chance—I can become rich!" And, instead of heading for safety, he ran from stateroom to stateroom collecting all the gold and jewelry he could find, stuffing it into his pockets and pants legs which he had tied at the ankles. "After all," he said to himself, "all these riches will go down with the ship anyway." When he could carry no more, he hurried to the top deck and, since all the lifeboats were now full and rowing away from the ship, he grabbed a life preserver and strapped it on. With that, he jumped into the waves, thinking that he had saved both his life and his newfound wealth. But, as his friends in the lifeboats looked on in horror, the greedy man plunged to the bottom of the ocean like a stone and was never seen again. Even the life preserver could not keep him afloat, weighed down as he was by all that gold.

Regardless of the provisions we might make for our life and salvation, attachment to material things and our greedy desire for more can easily weigh us down and be the cause of our own destruction.

So, if our life does not consist of possessions, of what does it consist? Saint Paul tells us in the second reading: "You have died," he says, "and your life is hidden with Christ in God." What can this mean? The Apostle is speaking of our Baptism, by which our old self, with its sinful nature, dies and is buried with Christ, only to be born again to newness of life. The ancient Greeks spoke of burial as being "hidden in the earth." So when Paul says that "your life is hidden with Christ in God," he seems to be saying that, through Baptism, your life is completely surrounded and submerged in Christ—becoming one with Christ, just as a body buried in the earth becomes one with the soil. It is in Christ, then, that our life consists.

For this reason, we must put to death all those tendencies which would lead us away from Christ. Saint Paul mentions lying, immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and—here it is again—greed, to which he gives the name, idolatry: the worship of a false god. How do we put to death these vices? By practicing their contrary virtues—what Paul calls "putting on the new self." Thus, we must cultivate truthfulness, modesty, purity, peaceableness, holy desires and generosity. These are the means by which we can become rich toward God. And, as an added bonus, they are also the means by which we can attain true happiness here and now.

Is there an even simpler way to sum up this new life in Christ? I think there is, and here I am quoting from the Catechetical Instructions of Saint John Vianney, the great patron of parish priests whose memorial falls this Wednesday: "The Christian’s treasure," he says, "is not on earth but in heaven. Our thoughts, then, ought to be directed to where our treasure is. This is the glorious duty of man: to pray and to love. If you pray and love, that is where your happiness lies."

© 2004, The Rev. Timothy W. Castor

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