Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time: 7-31-16
Peace be with You,
Over the last several weeks, we have been receiving a course in the fundamentals of discipleship from Jesus. We have seen that the life of discipleship is: 1) founded upon a relationship with Christ that seeks unity with Him; 2) has the imitation of Christ as its practical aim; and 3) consists of two fundamental and complementary dimensions: the active and the contemplative. This week, we are given instruction on how these two dimensions of the life of discipleship are to be applied when it comes to material possessions.
“Vanity of vanities! All things are vanity!” So begins the message related by Qoheleth, in our first reading from Ecclesiastes. To many, this may seem like a nihilistic commentary on life by the author, whose very name means “gatherer” or “acquirer” in Hebrew. If we read further on, we are enlightened to the fact that this individual has gathered many of the good things that life has to offer (wealth, pleasure, power), and has come to the conclusion that all is of no value as at the end of our life, for all that we have acquired will have to be turned over to another (Eccl. 2:21). The parable related by Jesus in our gospel today has much the same message, but includes a couple of important distinctions.
To begin, Jesus does not simply tell us that to have material possessions is bad, but makes the important qualifying cautionary statement that we must “Take care to guard against all greed,” for “one’s life does not consist of possessions” (Luke 12:15). The caution is against greed, the trait displayed by the man in the parable, not against material possessions in and of themselves. This is an important distinction, for it tells us that the Christian need not denounce all material possessions (though to be sure some do and serve as an emphatic living proclamation of the message proclaimed today), but rather, must view material possessions with the appropriate attitude.
This attitude is summarized and explained best by the concept of Ignatian Indifference, as explained by St. Ignatius of Loyola, a man who, like Qoheleth had experienced much of what the goods of the world had to offer before his conversion. As Ignatius writes in his Spiritual Exercises: “We must, then, above all things, endeavor to establish in ourselves a complete indifference with regard to all created things…since order requires that we wish for and choose in everything what will lead us most surely to the end for which we were created.” The end mentioned here by Ignatius is the very same end that our life of discipleship is aimed toward as explained by Paul in our second reading for today, unity with our God through Jesus Christ (cf. Col 3:1-5 & 9-11). Therefore, in following the thought of Ignatius, we must seek to have things in our lives only insofar as they bring us closer to this end, and reject them insofar as they distract us or take us farther away from it.
My friends, what Qoheleth, Paul and Jesus are encouraging us to do this weekend is maintain a healthy indifference when it comes to material goods. This is not a condemnation of material goods, but a call to view things as they are. That is that material goods do not have the ability to satisfy, or bring us happiness in and of themselves. Instead, they only have value in so far as they can be used to bring us closer to the end for which we have been made, unity with the God in Whom we “live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). If we are able to accept this message we will not limit ourselves to being rich in a manner that will eventually fade away, but we will live so as to become ‘rich in what matters to God.’ And what matters to God? That we possess life, and possess it to its fullest (John 10:10), as He proved by sending His Son so that we might have the chance to live just such a life (cf. John 3:16). Therefore, if we would become rich in what matters to God, we must live as the Son Incarnate. That is, we must live lives of self-giving love with all that we possess; material goods, abilities, time, etc. In so doing, we assist others in living life to the full and thereby accumulate the type of wealth that really matters to God.
Your servant in Christ,
Tony
Tony Crescio is the founder of FRESHImage Ministries. He holds an MTS from the University of Notre Dame and is currently a PhD candidate in Christian Theology at Saint Louis University. His research focuses on the intersection between moral and sacramental theology. His dissertation is entitled, Presencing the Divine: Augustine, the Eucharist and the Ethics of Exemplarity.
Tony’s academic publications can be found here.