Eighteenth Sunday of the Year -C

Lectio
      

Readings:

Ecc 1:2 2:21-23, Col 3:1-5 9-11, Luke 12:13-21  

The readings of today tell us to have proper priorities in our lives and to place our trust in God.  In Luke's gospel, Jesus warned his contemporaries against an obsession with material goods with a simple, yet direct parable.

Ecc 1:2 2:21-23

Today’s First Reading from the Book of Ecclesiastes teaches us how to find meaning in life and gives us the understanding that all things in this life, the pleasures as well as the sufferings are empty and purposeless. They have no real explanation.  . That is “vanity” in the sense of “worthlessness.” Vanity denotes emptiness or illusion. To prove how useless and vain the things of this life are, he cites the example of a man who worked intelligently and skillfully and produced wealth and things of value.  He has to die and leave them to somebody who did nothing to produce them. This is certainly foolishness on the part of man.  After all the toil and worry he has to leave them behind and go empty handed.  Therefore the wisdom writer says that life on earth is a succession of trials and troubles, labour and lamentations folly and frustrations.  But if the world is seen in the light of God’s revelation, it is a gift of God to man, the most useful and necessary gift.  It is a bridge between our earthly and eternal life.  It is different for those who toil for spiritual labour. Their recompense is being accumulated in Heaven, their rewards awaiting them on judgment day. Their spiritual treasures will never depart from them.

Col 3:1-5 9-11

In the Second Reading, taken from the Letter to the Colossians St Paul says that we must look for the things that are in heaven, where Christ is.  He wants all thoughts to be centered on heavenly things, not on the things that are on the earth.  He reminds the Colossian community that in Baptism they have become new persons as they have been raised with Christ.  There we find the perfect image of God in Jesus who is the perfect pattern of life for us. Christ wants us to identify our understanding of life, our values, with those of God, which have been communicated to us by the life and words of Jesus. Now, since life does not consist in the abundance of possessions, we need to look for the spiritual life namely by accumulating spiritual treasures in Heaven. This can be done by our acts of love towards others, by our acts of charity, through the goodness that we manifest towards our neighbours in the love of Jesus. What we do to others, we do to Christ.

Luke 12:13-21 

 The Gospel of today through parable of the rich  taken from Luke's gospel teaches us a lesson about greed that life does not consist in the abundance of possessions. The rich man's possessions gives him security and a way to define himself and enjoy life. Here we have the story of the so called rich man who places his trust in himself without realizing what awaits him in his immediate future. First of all, he pictured a long and bright future before him. Secondly, he regarded the material wealth he had gurantied for himself as the sign and the reward of a “successful” life. He also believed that all he possessed belonged exclusively to him. All the wealth he had earned if taken away it will be considered futile as he is not able to put it into any use.  The wisdom writer in the first reading uses the strong and powerful words to say that vanity of vanities and all is vanity. A human person should have a purpose in life.  The second reading invites us to identify what is essential in life and separate it from what is not. We are called upon to seek what is above, namely, the values of God.  Here we are called upon to judge ourselves by our interior self and not by the external material goods. We are measured by not what we own but by what we share and by the opportunity we have to grow in the lasting wealth of love.

What is truly important in the Gospel?

The gospel began with a request. Like a spoiled child who did not get his way, someone in the crowd appealed to Jesus to settle a fight over money. And like a wise parent, Jesus turned the problem back to the person by answering the question with another question: "Who made me your judge?" [12:13-14] The question also led to a teaching on the insignificance of wealth. And the importance of faith.

In the time of Jesus, there was no middle class, only the few who were rich and the masses who were poor. In the Roman empire, the elite (less than five percent of the population) controlled 80-90% of the wealth. The poor rented land to farm from the wealthy. Greedy bureaucrats served these elite by taxing the poor, and served themselves by "skimming" extra tax moneys for themselves. So the poor were victims in two ways, from land rents and over-taxation. The poor were so burdened that it was not unusual for many to be underfed in times of food surplus; many would actually sell themselves into slavery in order to feed their families.

In that desperate atmosphere, there was the temptation to place prime importance on economic survival. But Jesus questioned that logic: life was more than possessions. [12:15]

To make the point, Jesus told the parable of a rich, self-absorbed man who, on the eve of great material surplus, died. In life, the rich man hoarded, but in death, that what he desired was taken away, leaving his heart empty and his character hollow. Before God as judge, the rich man lacked what was truly important. [12:16-20] Like the contemporaries of Jesus, the gospel teaches us to store up what is important: faith in God and active compassion for one's neighbor. [12:21] Faith in God flies in the face of cynicism. Compassion flies in the face of greed. Together, faith and compassion challenge what people believe is really important in life.