By Fr Eugene Lobo –
Eighteenth Sunday of the Year July 31, 2022
Ecclesiastes 1:2, 2:21-23; Colossians 3:1-5.9-11; Luke 12:13-21
Our God is a personal God who is concerned about each and every one and personally takes care of us. He is a benevolent Father caring for the needs of his children and planning a future for each one. The Bible presents us God as a father who takes care of his children. His concern is beyond everything.
The readings of today invite us to have proper priorities in our lives and invite us to place our trust in God. The Gospel taken from Luke teaches us about greed that life does not consist in the abundance of possessions. The rich man’s possessions give him false security and evidence to feel he has total enjoyment of life. Yet fear and insecurity plague his soul makes him search for earthly means. The rich fool in the Gospel places his trust in himself without realizing what awaits him in his immediate future. First of all, he pictured a long and bright future for himself. Secondly, he regarded the material wealth as the sign and the reward of a “successful” life. We are called upon to seek what is above, namely, the values of God.
Today’s First Reading from the Book of Ecclesiastes teaches us how to find meaning in life and gives us the understanding that all things in this life, the pleasures as well as the sufferings are empty and purposeless. There is no real explanation to show how it all works.
The author questions what we as mortals get from all the toil and strain that we endure under the sun when at death, we must leave everything behind, for someone else to enjoy it.
In the Second Reading Paul advises the Colossian converts that they must look for the things of heaven where Christ is. He wanted that all thoughts to be centred on heavenly things, not on the things that are on the earth. He reminded the Colossian community that in Baptism they have become new persons as they have been raised with Christ. There we find the perfect image of God in Jesus who is the perfect pattern of life for us.
The Gospel of today begins by introducing a man who wants Jesus to act as a mediator in a property dispute with his brother. It was quite common for people to bring such disputes to a rabbi to be solved amicably. But Jesus had no interest whatever in dealing with such problems because they would represent a point of view that was totally at variance with his own.
This family dispute was not Jesus’ concern. His concern was to show the importance of God’s Kingdom. He says: “Truly, I say to you, there is no man who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not receive manifold more in this time, and in the age to come eternal life.” (Luke. 18:29-30) What Jesus absolutely asks of us is that we are not insatiable with respect to the riches of this world and that we must be ever ready to abandon them in spirit, and even in reality, if such is the Will of God.
Jesus provides all those who are present with a lesson: a parable. Jesus wanted to make everyone understand what one must not do. He clarified to them saying that the one who lays up treasure for his own self, and such a person is not rich toward God. Therefore the way one can be rich towards God is quite simply, to be “poor in spirit”. The follower of Christ must, first of all, be a man or woman who is poor in his or her heart: all that the person has entrusts it to God, and God takes care of them more than they could ever imagine.
In the Gospel of today, Jesus refused to get involved in such problems seemingly earthly. Instead, he used this occasion to warn his hearers about the seductive power of greed and the false sense of security. He gave a gentle warning: “Be on your guard against avarice of any kind, for a person’s life is not made secure by what he owns, even when he has more than he needs.” He did not show any opposition to wealth rather he calls on them to have a prudent use of wealth.
Jesus exemplified his point with a story of the rich fool who was totally involved with material things. The rich man in the story was a fool not because he was wealthy but because he thought that he could guarantee his own personal security through the hoarding of his harvest without placing his trust in God. This man had wrong priorities. The first was that he never saw beyond himself. He was extremely selfish.
The man’s second wrong priority was that he never saw beyond this world. His whole basis of security was his wealth. For him, his money and possessions were everything. Hence the gospel tells us that man planned to store his grains in bigger barns and provide for himself with a larger and secure storage place. He indeed had become the slave of the property and property was not his slave. The final priority was to look for happiness based on material goods. He told himself that he would be indeed happy for years to come. God called him a “fool”, a term that is reserved for those who deny that there is a God. (Psalm 13, 1)
Jesus himself made an application of the parable for the sake of the audience. He explained to them that this would be the fate of all those who only kept thinking of amassing earthly wealth and neglect their spiritual welfare. End of earthly life can always come far too soon for people whose whole heart is centred in this world. It is like a man who went before God and said that he had not harmed anyone and has not done any wrong and his hands are clean. But God looked at them and said but dear friend, these hands are empty. Thus the emphasis moves from anxiety to watchfulness.
The parables go further to show the interaction between the masters and servants. The good servant is always watchful is prepared for unexpected events. On the contrary, a servant who thinks that his master’s return is delayed acts irresponsibly and naturally is punished.
Today’s readings ask us to consider another approach altogether. It is important to emphasize that Jesus is not saying, “You must give up all these things and lead a life of bleak misery for my sake.” On the contrary, Jesus is offering a much more secure way to happiness and a life of real enjoyment than the way that most people insist on believing in even though it is seen to fail again and again. Against the greed that obsesses many people Jesus offers an opposite alternative to security and happiness – sharing.
In this context, we look at the rich man. In his own eyes, the rich man had been really a successful person. He had convinced himself that he had more than needed for his security and he could indeed be satisfied and happy. Yet one thing noticeable is that in this story no other people are mentioned. The rich person had made himself absolute centre of everything.
At the end of his teaching, Jesus places the invitation before his audience to give up treasures of this world in order to build treasures in heaven. The lesson from the Gospel is obvious. To be in this world and not of it, to collect the necessary goods of this world by honest labour and yet remain detached from them, to possess and not to be possessed by worldly riches, is an ideal to which our weak human nature responds very reluctantly.
Jesus has given us a lesson that greed and selfishness are always powerfully tempting to humankind. They are also very deceptive in that they promise far more than they can deliver. Real wealth and salvation rest in God.
A certain king was to visit a village under his rule and the villagers decided to contribute, each man a jar of wine, for the royal feast. All the wine was to be poured into a big barrel from which it would be served. One man thought to himself: With all the men in the village each pouring a jar of wine into the barrel, what difference would it make if I poured in a jar of water and save my wine.
A jar of water among so much wine would hardly make any difference. Unfortunately, he was not the only man in the village who thought that way. When the king arrived and the barrel of wine was ready to be served, it was discovered to be full of water and very little wine. Many other men in the village too had contributed water instead of wine, thinking that it did not matter since other people’s contributions would make up for their not contributing. It did matter. It does matter.