18th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Ecclesiastes 1:2, 2:21-23
Psalm 90:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 14, 17
Colossians 3:1-5, 9-11
Luke 12:13-21
The proverbial rich man recurs in Sacred Scripture as a foil to illustrate God’s common-sense wisdom about the senselessness of avarice. All such lessons get their mileage out of the universality of the human experience, overemphasizing one dimension of it for the sake of clarity and simplicity. However, considering the implied tacit layers even of fictitious prop characters can help to deepen our appreciation of the Lord’s core message.
How do these rich people get their money? “Here is one who has labored with wisdom and knowledge and skill” we read in Ecclesiastes, but rhetorically the speaker Qoheleth immediately asks, “For what profit comes to man from all the toil and anxiety of heart with which he has labored under the sun?” The Gospel gives two examples of wealth, one in real-life from an inheritance case question to Christ and another in a parabolical farm owner in His answer. The Psalmist asks for a blessing on “the work of our hands” and St. Paul indicates that in the end, it makes no difference … the point holds the same for all: “Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free.” Whether we earn it ourselves, come by it through right or by chance, or have others toil and collect the revenue, the resulting possibility of disordered fixation on possessions always surfaces, prompting the need for spiritually healthy detachment. “Think of what is above, not of what is on earth.”
How exactly do these wealthy people like to luxuriate in their material success? It’s pretty vague, including the plan to “rest, eat, drink, be merry.” Our imagination and experience can fill in the details for individual cases, all amounting to the general dissatisfied ennui that we know all too well. It fits the theme of the anonymous nature of these vignettes both in how relatable they are and how consequently identity-emptying they are. This amassing a fortune for its own sake is paradoxically accounted to be “a great misfortune.” In extreme cases, the thrill of the pursuit of money seems to be the draw in itself, not even enjoying its benefits (either legitimately or illicitly).
What might be the spiritual remedy for these affluent people? The Psalmist’s reminder that “You turn man back to dust … You make an end of them in their sleep” and the Gospel’s harsh condemnation, “You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you” both push the lesson to its obvious limit: As Ecclesiastes puts it, “yet to another who has not labored over it, he must leave property.” St. Paul employs the trope of mortality in eschatological terms: “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory. Put to death, then, the parts of you that are earthly.” As an inscription in a monastery on Mount Athos expresses it, “If you die before you die, you won’t die when you die.”
The passing things of the world are all famously labeled as “vanity,” that abyss of a word for emptiness, uselessness and ephemerality. The term means “breath,” ironically evoking both the divine means of rational man’s creation and the image of his final gasp, and therefore each breath in between and thus the whole life together as easily fleeting. It has the connotation of lies, a waste of words, and is also used to refer pejoratively to pagan idols, which are of course breathless and lifeless in opposition to the true and truthful living God. These associations explain the mind behind St. Paul’s advice on the topic: “Put to death, then, the parts of you that are earthly: 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 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed, for knowledge, in the image of its creator.”
The message for us is familiar and straightforward enough, but nonetheless challenging. “One’s life does not consist of possessions.” The only things we take with us in the next life are the things we give away in this one. Would we go before the Lord with deep pockets but a shallow soul, with full hands but an empty heart? “Thus will it be for all who store up treasure for themselves but are not rich in what matters to God.” Let us instead be spiritually wealthy by accumulating grace’s truly valuable riches.