August 1, 2004: He Who Has the Most... Loses

Dear Friends: This weekend, we have a missionary priest from the Philippines preaching at all our Masses at St. Paul's... so I got the day "off" from preaching. Rather than send you nothing, I thought I might be able to get away with recycling my homily from 2001 and sending it again this year. Blessings to you! FJL



The Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
August 1, 2004



This past week, I did something prophetic—or maybe I should say, pathetic. It depends on your point of view.

This week, I cleaned out several cabinets and shelves of my personal stuff. It was taking over! I found that space was getting tight everywhere — on my desk, on my bookshelves, in my closets and drawers. So, I had to make a decision: Do I find a better and bigger storeroom for the stuff? Or do I get into some serious dumping?

In the middle of this, it occurred to me that I wasn’t much different from the guy in the parable who had too much, so he built a bigger silo to hold his bumper crop. I think the Lord wanted me to clean house this week so that I could make a choice of performing a prophetic action — get rid of most of the stuff — or a pathetic action, find a new and bigger place to store it all.

This week’s Mass readings combat the popular theme: the one who has the most wins. Instead, with God, the one who has the most stuff and the least of God’s presence loses.

A few years ago, I visited a retired man who told me that he had let his entire life revolve around making money. He was a hard worker. He was successful. I visited him in his dream house. His living room looked like the display room of an expensive department store. He had anything and everything he could possibly want. You know what he said to me? He said, “Father, I am so empty. I’ve killed myself all my life for what I have, and it isn’t enough. I’ve wasted all my energy on things. Honestly, I would be happy to give all this stuff back if I could relive those times when money was more important to me than God.”

What this man expressed candidly is something that few of us have the courage to admit. Yes, we have to provide for our families, for our children and their future, for the grandchildren, and for our retirement… but we can get so caught up in making money, that money and the things it can buy easily become an end for our life rather than a means to draw us closer to God.

So what do we do? We work too hard. We don’t have enough time for our families. We get ulcers and early heart attacks. But we wind up with more things than the next guy, so we think we have won!

But you know what? We really have lost. Because in the long run, the quality of our lives is inferior to the quality of the lives of those who concentrate on the things that really matter.

“Vanity of Vanities,” says Qoheleth, the preacher from the Book of Ecclesiastes, our first reading today. Vanity of Vanities. We kill ourselves, and for what? For things that are useless compared to the real treasure that God wants us to have.

“Vanity of Vanities,” says Qoheleth. Qoheleth has a message for modern America — the same message the Lord teaches us in today’s parable. The message is this: keep your priorities straight in life. If your treasure is in heaven, if you work for things spiritual instead of material, if you build your life around sacrificial love for God — then you will be able to embrace the Lord’s love in eternity.

But if your treasure consists of just earthly things… if you’ve missed opportunities to demonstrate your love for the Lord by refusing to buy into idea that you’ve got to have more and more, if when you run out of room for more stuff you simply build bigger and bigger silos — then, sadly, one day you’ll have to leave your treasure behind. You’ll have nothing but regrets to take with you into eternity.

Never forget that the goal of life is to be eternally happy, not temporarily happy. The wise man, then, stores up eternal treasure, not temporary treasure. And eternal treasure comes only from the Lord.

Without God all life is meaningless. But with Him, every aspect of our lives proclaims and rejoices in the reason we were created in the first place: to know Him, to love Him, to serve Him. And therein lies our true treasure.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could really live out St. Paul’s advice today? “Put to death,” he says, “the parts of you that are earthly: immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and the greed that is idolatry.” In other words, to give up on our terminal and selfish quest for more money, more stuff, more power, more control, more, more, more!

But of course it’s possible! It takes a little grace, a little self-discipline, a little guts — but it’s very doable. Are you willing to risk heaven for a few earthly trinkets — or do you really hunger for Paradise?

Please don’t answer that just yet. Why not drive out to the cemetery today, walk around a little bit, and make your decision while you’re there.

Beloved of the Lord, God be with you!



Today’s Readings
Ecclesiastes 1, 2 and 2, 21–23
Psalm 90
Colossians 3, 1–5 and 9–11
Luke 12, 13–21