Dear Friends,
Today’s Sunday gospel is not an easy one for our culture. The judgement of Jesus on the man who stored up treasure for himself is not one that middle class and wealthy Americans can rejoice in. “God said to him, ‘You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?’ Thus will it be for all who store up treasure for themselves but are not rich in what matters to God.” As one scripture scholar put it, “a careful reading of the story shows it to be a brilliant cartoon illustrating how greed destroys all the covenant relationships…with the earth, with his community, with himself, and with God.”
An even broader challenge appears in the second reading, “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. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all and in all.”
What Jesus teaches is not new. It is contained in the wisdom of the first reading and in many places and forms of wisdom literature throughout human history. Those who are wise often advise us not to get lost in the things of this world because in doing so we lose it all. Here are some examples from the writings of Marcus Aurelius, a Roman Emperor and philosopher who lived a hundred years after Jesus:
“Nothing will sooner prevent your true spirit from flourishing or be more difficult to root out than the distraction of a divided loyalty. Nothing whatsoever – neither popularity, nor wealth, nor power, nor the pleasures of the flesh, nor anything of the sort – should compete in your affection for the good that flows from reason and neighborliness.”
“Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, the sun will soon set, and you with it.”
“There is no present advantage in anything that may someday force you to break your word, or to lose respect for yourself, or to hate, suspect, or curse another, or to pretend to be other than you are, or to lust after what you’d be ashamed to seek openly.”
“Were you to live three thousand years or even thirty thousand, remember that a man can lose only the life he is living, and he can live no other life than the one he loses. For the present moment is of equal duration for everyone, and that is all any man possesses.”
“Act, speak, and think like a man ready to depart this life in the next breath.”
“First thing every morning tell yourself: today I am going to meet a busybody, an ingrate, a bully, a liar, a schemer, and a boor. Ignorance of good and evil has made them what they are. But I know that the good is by nature beautiful and the bad ugly, and I know that these wrong-doers are by nature my brothers, not by blood or breeding, but by being similarly endowed with reason and sharing in the divine. None of them can harm me, for none can force me to do wrong against my will and I cannot be angry with a brother or resent him, for we were born into this world to work together.”
While the wisdom Jesus offers may echo that which has come from the ages, we should pay his wisdom additional heed because it is not just wise, but from the one we believe is divine. Simple human wisdom now is divine revelation with all the consequences that brings…
Peace,
Fr. Damian