Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary time
By Fr. Bevil Bramwell

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Ecc 1:2; 2:21-23
Ps 90:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 14, 17
Col 3:1-5, 9-11
Lk 12:13-21

Last week we heard about appreciating the blessings of God who acts in this world, this week we hear about paying attention to “being rich in what matters to God.” (Gospel) We hear of a string of things that occupy many people: inheritances and possessions. These look really important. We are told thousands of times a day that they are important. They are also something that we can manage because they are material things. We learn the rules for how to make money and we go ahead and we even measure our success in these terms. Yet in the face of this . . .

The First Reading from the Book of Ecclesiastes keeps up this drumbeat about “vanity”. The word comes from the word for ‘vain’ meaning ‘serving no purpose’. These words are inspired so they mean that when God says something is vain then it is!

The Responsorial Psalm reminds us that our lives will ‘return to dust’, and that we ‘wilt and fade in the evening’. Then we come to the heart of the readings. We sing: “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain wisdom of heart.” Here is the core of the Christian life. Let us appreciate how few days we have and use them―not to accumulate possessions but to gain ‘wisdom of heart’. This fits in so well with the acclamation, “harden not your hearts,” because God can and does speak to us―that is where wisdom comes from. God speaks to us through his eternal Word, Jesus Christ, who is the wisdom of God. The Psalm also has us praying for God’s return.

Now in the Second Reading, we hear Paul saying: “If you were raised with Christ, seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Think of what is above, not of what is on earth.” Material things are not our priority. They cannot be since they are ‘in vain’ according to Ecclesiastes. But Paul gives us a lot more detail of the flawed life in this world. It involves: “immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and the greed that is idolatry. Stop lying to one another, since you have taken off the old self with its practices.” These too are in vain, they do not gain us anything permanent. The permanence comes from Christ because “Christ is all and in all.”

In the Gospel, the one how is ‘all in all’ gives his response to what seems to be an ordinary legal question about an inheritance. In his answer, Jesus explains: “one’s life does not consist of possessions.” Again this is revelation so it is true.  Then Jesus gives us a little parable about a rich man who can control everything but when he is going to die. The rich man’s problem is that he has not become “rich in what matters to God.” Again we come back to God as the reference point for everything. The question for us today is where do our values come from?