Seeking True Wealth, Eighteenth Sunday (C), August 4, 2019

Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Sylvester Parish Parish, Medford, NY
Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
August 4, 2019
Eccl 1:2.21-23, Ps 90, Col 3:1-5,9-11; Lk 12:13-21

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click below: 

This is the text that guided the homily: 

• The words from the Book of Ecclesiastes never lose their prophetic shock: “Vanity of vanities! All things are vanity!,” it says, before going on to say that eventually our earthly wisdom, knowledge, skill, toil and property will all pass away. None of these has lasting value. In the Gospel, Jesus illustrates this vanity when someone asks him to get involved in an inheritance dispute, telling the story of a man who doesn’t know what to do with his abundant harvest. In response to what he deems a crisis, he ultimately decides to build bigger silos to store it, unaware that he would die that very night. Rather than use his massive surplus of food to feed the hungry, he thinks only about himself and about hoarding his earthly wealth. It’s vanity. And Jesus says that this vanity of giving into thinking that “one’s life does … consist of possessions” and giving into greed is a spiritual cancer that will affect “all who store up treasure for themselves but are not rich in what matters to God.” Jesus wants us all to be rich, but rich in what lasts. He wants us to be greedy not to fill attics, basements, storage facilities or ever bigger houses, but to build spiritual barns full to the brim with what matters.
• So what matters? Saint Paul tells the Corinthian that only three things remain, “faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor 13:13). God wants us to become great in faith, stinking rich in hope, and overflowing in love for God and for others. Are we? Do we care more about our spiritual portfolio than the greediest young financiers think about their financial portfolio? Do we place our hopes in God, in holiness, in heaven, or do we place our security in the things of this world? Do we, like great entrepreneurs, seize every chance we have to grow in love of God and true sacrificial love of our neighbor? St. Paul in today’s second reading repeats to us what we hear every Easter Sunday morning at Mass: “If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Think of what is above, not what is on earth, for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” We need to place our treasure in God and the things of God, because, as Jesus said, our heart will be where our treasure is, and a Christian needs to have his heart in God. Once our heart really is in God, then we no longer serve mammon, but use it for God’s glory and for the building of his kingdom. St. John Vianney, the patron saint of priests who died 160 years ago today (August 4), used to say, “Your well-being is nothing other than a depository that God has put in your hands,” and counseled that after taking what is necessary for us and our family, to give the rest to the poor, because our charity is the only thing that will ever pass through the eye of the needle into eternity.
• This weekend, we have here at St. Sylvester the annual missionary appeal, in which we will hear from Father Manuel Zazart about the concrete needs he and his fellow Pallotine missionaries need to spread the faith and care for the people entrusted to them all over the world, but in particular the poorest places of India. I would urge you in Christ’s name to see the surplus that you have in your life — and perhaps even some of what might be considered necessities — and prayerfully consider being lavishly generous to what you will hear after Holy Communion. This afternoon you will have a chance to become rich in what matters to God and share what God has given you in a way that will not be a vanity of vanities, but in fact a holy of holies.

The readings for today’s Mass were: