Storing Treasure in Heaven, 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C), August 1, 2010

Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Anthony of Padua Church, New Bedford, MA
Eighteenth Sunday in OT, Year C
August 1, 2010
Eccl 1:2;2:21-23; Col 3:1-5,9-11; Lk 12:13-21

The following text guided today’s homily: 

• Today in the Gospel, Jesus gets right to the heart of some of the most important questions we need to answer: What I am living for? What am I working for? He exposed that living for money is, to quote today’s first reading, a “vanity of vanities,” or in other words, a complete waste of time. He did so by means of the image of the rich farmer who just continued to build larger silos to store his crops, totally unaware that his life was soon going to be over and then none of it would matter. Here in the city, few of us are farmers and few of us would therefore seek to build larger barns for produce, but many of us worry about increasing the size of our homes, or bank accounts, pensions or retirement funds. Many of us behave like the man who came up to Jesus at the beginning of the Gospel, asking him to settle an inheritance dispute. This man obviously thought that his brother was wronging him and wanted Jesus, the just one, to intervene. I don’t hesitate to add that this man’s brother was probably wronging him. But underneath this appeal for justice, Jesus saw two things at play.
  • First, the petitioner at a practical level was thinking that gaining the inheritance was more important than maintaining a good relationship with his brother. How many people today still think and act in these terms, allowing money or other vanities to separate them and keep them separated for years, decades or even to the grave!
  • Second, Jesus saw that, despite what was likely a just request, the motivation underneath it was not justice but primarily GREED disguised as justice. That’s why Jesus told not only the petitioner but the whole crowd: “Beware of all kinds of greed, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions!”
• The problem for many of us and so many of our fellow citizens is that we think that life does consist in the abundance of possessions. We idolize the rich and famous. We put in long hours of work to try to secure a little bit of their life. While few of us spend much time setting our hearts mansions, rolls royces, butlers and chauffeurs, we do spend our time dreaming about and working for much larger homes, new cars, housekeepers and the like. We may pretend that because we’re not rich, we’re not greedy, while we continue to think about money all the time. In today’s second reading, St. Paul says that greed is “idolatry,” it’s a false god. And how many in our culture worship this false god, working for hours on end at the cost of their health, their marriages, their families and sometimes their lives, just to make more money. And for what? Just material possessions that we cannot take with us as we die. Just for vanities. The surest sign that so many of us and our contemporaries worship money would be the reaction I’d get if I mentioned that Bill Gates would be here giving $1,000,000 to everyone who comes to Mass next weekend. If that were true, this Church would be mobbed next week. Even if there were just going to be a lottery for one person to receive $1,000,000, the Church would still be packed. They’d come for money. They’d rearrange their schedule to be here early if it would give them a better chance. They’d be thinking about it all week. But then, when it’s a question about receiving the eternal Son of God, of progressing on the path to heaven, they’ll often find excuses about other things they “have to” do, and not come. Jesus said clearly that we cannot serve both God and money. We need to make a choice. For us, it’s always the choice offered to the Rich Young Man, a choice between Jesus and our stuff. The Rich Young Man in the Gospel, when he knew that something was missing from his life even though he was keeping the commandments, was told by Jesus what he needed to do to come to perfection: he needed to sell his goods, give the money to the poor and then come follow him. But the man chose his stuff, and unsurprisingly went away sad. Today Jesus meets all of us, like the Rich Young Man, and tells us to beware of all types of greed, of idolizing money, or serving mammon, and encourages us, challenges us, calls us and wants to help us to choose not the path of vanity, the complete waste of our time on earth, but to seek heaven and place our heart, and our treasure, in what we can take with us when we die: the riches that pertain to God!
• What are we living for? What are we working for? Today St. Paul tells us in the second reading how to become rich in what pertains to God. He begins with reminding us that we have been raised by Christ. Eternal life with God is not just possible but will happen provided that we do not squander this incredible gift and inheritance through a life of vanity. Becoming rich toward God means, he says, that we “seek the things that are above” and “set our minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth.” Do we? Pope Benedict mentions that one of the greatest illnesses plaguing even good and moral people today is that we seek only after “lesser hopes,” or this-worldly goals, many of which are good and fine, but limited: we hope for good grades, a good college, a good job, a good husband or wife, good kids, good friends, a good home and what the world thinks is a good life. None of these is bad, but even all of them together are insufficient. He says that our life should be marked above all by the “great hope,” which he says is the hope for an eternal life of love with God in heaven. And if that is our hope, if that is the goal of our life, then we must choose the path here on earth that will lead us there.
• Think about what someone would do if he or she wanted to become rich in this world. I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday who lived this life. Her older brother, who was a successful businessman, told her what she needed to do. She worked like a maniac in college in order to get into a famous business school as an undergraduate. She worked like crazy there, majoring in a field that would lead to a lucrative career in Manhattan. Off she went after graduating and worked ludicrous hours to out-compete her colleagues and get the attention of her bosses. She did. By the time she was 30, she was already taking home more than a million dollars a year. But she knew something was missing. She came to realize that all the money that was passing through her hands was basically monopoly money. She came back to the faith, made the courageous decision to leave her job in order not merely to be with her young kids but begin to home school them and use all the talents God had given her to try to raise them to seek not what she had sought, but to seek God and the things that will last forever. But while I was listening to her, I was amazed at the level of determination she had in order just to get ahead in this world, and how everything she did was done in light of making money later.
• Once in the Gospel, Jesus said that we children of the light need to be just as savvy in storing up for ourselves the things of heaven as my friend was — and so many others today are — in securing this-worldly fortunes. Just as a money-hungry person needs to study, to work long hours, to sacrifice various things they’d like to do, to persevere, in order to get ahead in New York, so the Christian needs to work just as hard and just as concretely to get ahead in the New and eternal Jerusalem. St. Paul describes some of what we have to do in today’s second reading: “Therefore, put to death whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed. Stop lying to one another.” Just as a businesswoman needs to put away teenage clothes, teenage vocabulary and habits, and especially vices like dishonesty and laziness, so the Christian, seeking an eternal treasure, must put away all types of things that will prevent our achieving the goal. Just like businesspeople constantly need to make a choice that will advance their career or frustrate it, so the Christian must make choices. Let’s look at just one thing St. Paul says: Fornication — Would we choose to have sex outside of marriage — even if with the most beautiful person in the world — or to remain chaste for the kingdom? This is really a choice between hell and heaven, between this worldly counterfeit wealth and the true riches of the kingdom. This is crucially important today, because just as our culture pushes people to greed and to materialism, so it pushes people, from junior high school students, to teens, to young adults, to married couples, and those who are divorced, to seek sexual pleasure, a certain “greed of the body,” above the kingdom. I think most of us recognize how sad it is when businesswomen, for example, try to sleep their way to the top and bosses seek to make them think that they need to come to bed in order to get ahead. But it’s just as misguided for us to think that in order to become happy in this world, in order to get ahead in what really matters, the means is through fornication. It’s not. Fornication is the path of vanity.
• Seeking what is above, St. Paul says, involves stripping off the old self and becoming clothed with the new self who is Christ, being renewed in his image. The way to store up for ourselves treasure in heaven is by placing our treasure in what God treasures. That’s our task. And our life, in this world and in the next, depends on it.

• Mass is the great gift for us to strip off our old selves and become more like Christ. In a few minutes, I will say, “Lift up your hearts!” because the Mass is precisely the means God gives us to help us to do what he’s calling us to do. It’s a great opportunity to help us divest ourselves of our greed. The collection for the parish and, today, for the needs of the Holy Father, are an opportunity for us to show ourselves and God whether we’re generous or stingy, whether we’re giving what is right or what is left over, whether we’re sacrificing our surplus wealth or valuing the spread of the Gospel so much that we’re willing to put our money where our values and treasure are. The Mass also helps us to do this because we receive the greatest treasure in the world here at Mass. Jesus is the pearl of great price, the treasure buried in a field, worth selling everything we have to obtain. The more we order our lives toward him in the Eucharist, who gives his entire body, blood, soul and divinity to us, the more our whole life will seek the riches of the kingdom, the riches that moths can’t destroy or rust corrode. As we prepare to receive him today, we ask him to help us to cut our ties from all that keeps us shackled here below, so that we might leave behind what is vanity and grasp onto him who is our treasure, now and forever!

The readings for today’s Mass were: