18th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2025 - Vanity of vanities

 The book of Ecclesiastes was written about 300 years before the birth of Our Lord and is part of the Old Testament known as the Wisdom literature, along with the book of Proverbs and Psalms. The Jewish people read from the book of Ecclesiastes every year during the festival of Booths, when they celebrate the fall harvest. And there is some wisdom there. In the midst of the abundance of the harvest—the abundance of earthly things—they read “vanity of vanities all things are vanity”—a reminder that the things of the earth pass away, they are as ephemeral as a breath.

We are to take the wisdom of Ecclesiastes to heart: that the purpose of life isn’t simply to toil for earthly things—to hoard up earthly treasure. In the end our earthly pursuits really aren’t that important. Scripture calls it foolishness to spend your life toiling away just to make a bunch of money to pass onto children who will likely squander it.

Rather, we are to live wisely. Wisdom seeks what is highest and most important. We are to live in such a way in which we seek not what is earthly, but what is timeless, in which we are oriented not toward the earthly but to the eternal, to accumulate and pass on to future generation not simply earthly wealth but eternal wisdom. Wisdom is more valuable than wealth or earthly accolades. What good is winning an earthly race if you lose the heavenly one.

When confronted by someone from the crowd who is clearly overly concerned with earthly matters, Our Lord in the Gospel this today teaches, “Take care to guard against all greed, for though one may be rich, one’s life does not consist of possessions.” Greed—the love of money—the love of possessions—is a powerful motivating factor for a lot of people, in ancient Israel, in Jesus’ day, and in our own. And so the Lord says, take care to guard against this temptation. Take care, exert effort, to make sure your life is properly oriented.

And then to drive home his point, the Lord tells a parable in which a man who foolishly hoarded earthly possessions dies and ends up with nothing.  “Thus will it be for all who store up treasure for themselves but are not rich in what matters to God.”

If we are focused more on earthly things than heavenly things we are dead inside, we are not on the path of life that leads to heaven.

The Scripture readings throughout Ordinary Time are wonderfully challenging. They help us to ensure that our priorities are straight, our lives are in order, that we are properly oriented to running the race that matters most to God.

Consider what we’ve heard over the last three weeks. Three weeks ago, we heard the story of the Good Samaritan. What matters to God is that we exercise charity to all, we expand our definition of a neighbor to include those whom the rest of the world overlooks. What matters to God is that we become Good Samaritans to all.

Two weeks ago, we heard of Jesus’ visit to the home of Martha and Mary. When Martha complained about being overwhelmed with earthly matters, we heard what mattered most to Jesus is what Mary was doing: she was nurturing a personal, intimate relationship with Jesus by listening to his words, sitting in his presence.

And then last week, we heard how Jesus taught his disciples to pray. He taught his disciples the perfect prayer, the Our Father. What matters to God is that we seek His Will over our own, that we approach him with open-hands daily instead of relying on our own self-sufficiency, that we practice unconditional forgiveness, that we seek God’s protection and deliverance from all evil every day. The Our Father is a sort of checklist. Are you seeking God’s will every day, are you turning to God for your daily bread, the help you need that can only come from God, are you seeking to become more merciful every day. If not, conversion, change is needed.

Then today’s parable about earthly stuff reminds us that God is not impressed by the quantity of our assets. Heaven—eternal life— is not obtained by the number of trophies, degrees, social media followers and likes.

What impresses God is the quality of our our souls, whether our lives are filled with his truth, goodness, and beauty, or not.

In the Second Reading, St. Paul says bluntly: “put to death, the parts of you that are earthly:” Here’s the remedy for our tendency to love the things of earth more than the things of heaven.

The parts of us that are obsessed with storing up things that do not matter to God, put them to death, bury them and leave them behind. The things that cause you to forget about heaven, your Christian duties, your Christian identity, sever your relationship with them.

Paul says put to death “immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and the greed that is idolatry.”  Do everything you can to stop following impulses which are soley focused on earthly pleasure, earthly gain.

God wants to share his very life with us, to make us like himself, full of generous self-giving and limitless charity. But we need practice discipline toward the earthly, so that we may say yes to God.

At this Holy Mass Jesus comes once again to renew us in Word and Sacrament, may he continue to free us from the desire for earthly things and increase our hunger and thirst for holiness, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

25th Week in OT 2020 - Friday - A time for everything (School Mass)

 I’ve been able to say hello to some of you in the parking lot in the mornings before school, but I’m very happy to greet you all for the first time, albeit virtually, and to wish you all a very blessed new school year.

This is a year unlike any other years, isn’t it? Virtual classrooms, social distancing. And I don’t think we could have a more relevant first reading than we did this morning. So, relevant to the strange circumstances in which education must occur this year. 

Ecclesiastes says, there is an appointed time for everything, a time for everything under the heavens.  

“A time to embrace, and a time to be far from embraces.” Most schools years fall into that first category, don’t they? A time for embrace—of being close to each other. The word embrace literally means, being able to throw your arms around a friend or a loved one. And now, about half of our students are not able to join us in person, quite yet. And, sadly, we have to avoid the physical contact we are used to.

It is a time to be far from embraces. Most of our families even are forced to be far from embraces. We can’t just go and throw our arms around our cousins or aunts and uncles or grandparents. And that’s terribly sad.

But, this reading from ecclesiastes reminds us that through all these different changing times and seasons of life and human history, even very strange times like the one we live in now, God is working in our lives. God is bigger, God is stronger, than even our worst problems. 

And what is God doing? What is God doing even now in this time of sickness, this time where we must be far from embraces?. God is at work, the book of ecclesiastes says, to put the timeless into our hearts.

What does that mean? That means when we are living through good times, God is at work to make us holy. And when we are going through bad times or difficult times or terrible times, God is at work to make us holy. God wants to make us holy whether we are in peace times or at war, whether we are rejoicing over the wonderful things happening to us, or we are mourning over the very sad things.

Ecclesiastes says that God is at work, often, without us discovering what he is doing. Often, and especially when we are going through difficult times, like we are right now, it is hard to know what God is doing. It’s hard to fathom that anything good can come out of evil. It is hard to see the hand of God. It is hard to imagine just what good God can bring out of social distancing, distance learning, quarantine.

There is an old saying that absence makes the heart grow fonder. In other words, being far from embraces, as ecclesiastes puts it, helps us to value and be grateful for the times that we are able to be together and share embraces. God wants to help us see goodness everywhere and in all people. God wants us to work to bring goodness out of every evil and to love and cherish every person—every human life. Ecclesiastes reminds us to make the best use of the time that we’ve been given, and that always means, looking for God, praying to God, and valuing the things of God. 

I’d rather that all of you would be able to join me in church today, but, perhaps, God is teaching all of us to value being in Church more than we did, when we could come here freely.

The theme for this school year is “go out to all the world and tell the good news”, with the help of the Holy Spirit, may we continue to look for creative ways to do that, even with the constraints upon us, to share the good news of Jesus Christ with the time that we’ve been given, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.

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That we may use the time, talent, and treasure with which they’ve been blessed, to grow in the timeless virtues of faith, hope, and charity. Let us pray to the Lord.

For blessings upon the teachers and staff of St. Ignatius of Antioch Elementary, that they may strive to share their knowledge with gentle patience and endeavor always to bring the truth to eager minds. Let us pray to the Lord.

For parents, the first teachers of their children, that their faith and love may be an example to their children always. Let us pray to the Lord Let us pray to the Lord.

For students: that they may use their God given gifts and talents to apply themselves diligently to their studies, for peace and harmony among them, and the flowering of the Gifts of every spiritual gift. Let us pray to the Lord.

That all of our homes may be places where the timeless word of God is studied, cherished, and practiced Let us pray to the Lord.

For an end to oppression, racism, hatred, addiction and injustice. For those most profoundly impacted by the coronavirus, for first responders, the underemployed and unemployed, and the healing of all the sick Let us pray to the Lord.

For the deceased members of our family, friends, and parish, for all of the poor souls in purgatory, and for N. …for whom this Mass is offered. Let us pray to the Lord.

O God, you know that present life is subject to suffering and need, hear the prayers of those who cry to you, and receive the prayers of those who believe in you. Through Christ Our Lord.

18th Sunday in OT 2019 - Put Greed to Death

The book of Ecclesiastes was written about 300 years before the birth of Our Lord and is part of the Old Testament known as the Wisdom literature, along with the book of Proverbs and Psalms. The Jewish people read from the book of Ecclesiastes every year during the festival of Sukkot, the festival of Booths, at the end of autumn, when they celebrate the fall harvest. In the midst of the abundance of earthly things, they read “vanity of vanities all things are vanity”—a reminder that the things of the earth pass away, they are as ephemeral as a breath.

Ecclesiastes reminds all people that the purpose of life isn’t simply to toil for earthly things; in fact, that in the end our earthly pursuits aren’t really that important. It’s a travesty to spend all your life, all your time, to just make a bunch of money and then die, to pass it onto children who will just squander it. Rather, through the seasons of life, we are to cooperate with God that God may place the timeless into our hearts and reorient us from the earthly to the eternal, we are to pass on to future generations not just wealth, but wisdom, to help them value wisdom more than wealth or earthly accolades.

When confronted someone from the crowd who is clearly overly concerned with earthly matters, Our Lord in the Gospel this today teaches, “Take care to guard against all greed, for though one may be rich, one’s life does not consist of possessions.” Greed—the love of money—the love of possessions—is a powerful motivating factor for a lot of people, in ancient Israel, in Jesus’ day and in our own. We commit Greed when we overvalue the things of the earth and undervalue the things of God.
And in order to reinforce this command, Jesus goes on to tell a parable, known as the parable of the rich fool. “There was a rich man whose land produced a bountiful harvest. He asked himself, ‘What shall I do, for I do not have space to store my harvest?’

Notice, right from the start of this parable that the only person this rich farmer talks to is himself. He’s not seeking the timeless wisdom of God, he only keeps his own counsel. He only listens to himself. Here’s the first indication that he’s a fool. As the book of Proverbs says: Those who trust only in themselves are fools.

Notice, too, that the reaction of this farmer to the abundance of his crop is not gratitude but an impulse to hoard. He identifies his crops as his possession to be hoarded for himself. I will build bigger barns to store my grains and my goods. He foolishly does not see the good things that he has as gifts from God, the source of all blessing. He foolishly dismisses the wisdom of Proverbs which teaches that are are to give the firstfruit of our labors to God. This foolish farmer has not even considered his duty toward God, nor his duty toward the needy in his community. He sees his abundance only in greedy, selfish terms. His goods will enable him and him alone to eat, drink, be merry, and rest for years to come.

But, then he gets a surprise, doesn’t he? God has overheard his interior monologue. God knows the selfishness in his heart. God says, ‘You fool!” forget about those years and years of merriment you have planned for yourself, “this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?’ The farmer’s greed has resulted in a sort of death of soul—greed after all is listed as one of the 7 deadly sins, causing the death of grace in our souls, the death of the love of God in us.

Jesus then drives the point home, by teaching: “Thus will it be for all who store up treasure for themselves but are not rich in what matters to God.” So, in order to avoid the spiritual death of the greedy, we do well to consider what does it mean to be rich in what matters to God?

Well, the last few weeks we have heard wonderful stories about what matters to God. Three weeks ago, we heard the story of the Good Samaritan. What matters to God is that we exercise charity to all, we expand our definition of a neighbor to include those whom the rest of the world overlooks. What matters to God is that we become Good Samaritans to all. Two weeks ago, we heard of Jesus’ visit to the home of Martha and Mary. When Martha complained about being overwhelmed with earthly matters, we heard what mattered most to Jesus is that Mary was concerned with heavenly matters, she nurtured that intimate relationship with Him by listening to his words, sitting in his presence, that’s what matters to God.

And then last week, we heard how Jesus taught his disciples to pray. He taught his disciples the perfect prayer, the Our Father. What matters to God is that we seek His Will over our own, that we approach him with open-hands daily instead of relying on our own self-sufficiency, that we practice unconditional forgiveness, and seek God’s protection and deliverance from all evil.
One of the points of today’s parable is that God is not impressed by the quantity of our assets. What impresses God is the quality of our lives, the quality of our souls, whether our lives are filled with his truth, goodness, and beauty, or not.

Elsewhere in the Gospel, Our Lord teaches, where your heart is, there your treasure will be also. Do you want to know what a person values? Look at that person’s life, his commitments. On what does he spend his time? On himself, on building himself up in the eyes of the world, in pursuit please? Or does he treasure the things of God?

In the Second Reading, St. Paul says bluntly: “put to death, the parts of you that are earthly:” Here’s the remedy for our tendency to love the things of earth more than the things of heaven.

The parts of us that are obsessed with the goods of this world, put them to death, the parts of us that consider the earthly more important than the heavenly? Nail them to the cross and leave them behind. The things that cause you to forget Christian duty and your Christian identity, sever your relationship with them.

Paul says put to death “immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and the greed that is idolatry.”  Immorality ignores the commandments of God and the teachings of the Church, put an end to it.  Impurity uses one’s body in ways that it is not meant to be used, put an end to it.  Greed wants too much of what it does not need and too little of what gives life to the soul, put an end to it.  Say “no more” to every impulse that seeks happiness in things rather than the newness of life that comes from God.

For that is what God wants for us: to share his very life with us, to make us like himself, full of generous self-giving and limitless charity, to glorify God in seeking and living out His will.

At this Holy Mass Jesus comes once again to renew us in Word and Sacrament, may he continue to free us from the desire for earthly things and increase our hunger and thirst for holiness, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.