The Old Testament reading reminds us that we can spend our whole lives acquiring things but, in the end, all of our possessions will go to those who haven’t worked for them. This sets us up for the Gospel reading, as Jesus addresses a man who wants him to settle a dispute about an inheritance. As always, Jesus turns the immediate issue into a lesson about a greater truth.

First Reading -- Do not spend your life toiling for material gain (Ecclesiastes 1:2; 2:21-23).

Psalm -- If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts. (Psalm 90:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 14, 17)

Second Reading -- Christ has raised you to new life, so seek now what is above (Colossians 3:1-5, 9-11).

Gospel --  Be on guard against all greed, for your life does not consist of earthly possessions, but of the riches of the reign of God (Luke 12:13-21).

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Reflection by Opening the Word

Readers of Ecclesiastes are sometimes shocked by what they take to be its apparent cynicism. Are all things really just vanity? (The Hebrew word means something like a puff of wind.) Is this really what we ought to believe? Is this what the Bible teaches? Aren’t we to value the things of God’s creation as gifts? Isn’t life valuable in all its aspects, if for no other reason than because it comes from God and can lead us to him? The answer to all these questions is “yes!” We sometimes mistakenly think that since everything in the Bible is inspired by God and true, that everything that is said or done in it is fully approved by God. The Bible is an inspired and true chronicle of the persons, words, and events by which God discloses himself to us. But sometimes the people and the words they speak or the things they do are only partial reflections of and, in some cases, entirely opposed to his will.

Sometimes God teaches us through the partial, sometimes by way of the entirely negative lessons that our human mistakes can provide. Qoheleth (meaning one who speaks in the qahal or the public assembly) represents the true situation of the one who has not yet received the fuller revelation that we have in Christ. The world makes much more sense to us after Jesus enters time and history in a direct way to show us its value. But the basic message of Qoheleth remains sound, the true value of the things of time and history must be measured by the things of eternity, otherwise they are vain.
  Looking at this passage from Colossians, we reflect again on the point made about the first reading from Ecclesiastes: We have to understand the shape of history in order to read it rightly. That shape is given in the Creed and turns on three seminal events—creation, redemption, and sanctification. These are all acts of God and unless we understand them we will misjudge almost everything else in human experience. Creation is a beautiful gift, but one that from the beginning we have often misused. Adam and Eve misused the gift of their freedom and made creation into what St. Paul calls the “world” or the “earthly” (which is creation separated from its Creator). In the Redemption we receive the grace to reconnect creation to its Creator, to “what is above.” If, while here below, we “seek what is above,” where Christ is with the Father, then we can become a part of the very work of renewal that God is working in the world through the Holy Spirit.

Through his sanctifying work we are “renewed,” taking off the “old self” and putting on the “new self.” We become reunified within, regaining the integrity (the “image of [the] creator”) our first parents lost through sin and rejecting those things—“immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and the greed that is idolatry”—that would fracture us within and yield division without. In this way we are renewed, too, “for knowledge” and begin to see the true shape of history and the real values of things, where “Christ is all in all”.
  One of the characteristic signs of a deep faith is the ability to embrace the poverty of spirit that Jesus enjoins in the Beatitudes and here in Luke. St. Paul says in Philippians 4:11-13 (RSV): “I have learned, in whatever state I am, to be content. I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound; in any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and want. I can do all things in him who strengthens me.”

There is nothing wrong in rejoicing in plenty. The real danger is the greed that the habit of plenty can so easily engender in us. (How, after all, can we know if we can be content without our goods, if we never actually are?) In the West, and especially in the United States, we are constantly tempted by the spirit of greed. As we saw in the second reading, greed is associated with idolatry, illegitimate worship. When anything --financial security, status, our sexual appetites, celebrity—begins to win our hearts and to become the focus of our desire and efforts, we have begun to turn toward false worship. Orthodoxy, which can mean “right woship” (orthos = straight and doxa = glory), requires not just right thinking about the things of the world but a proper ordering of our desires. We do well to have the doxology always on our lips to protect us from the spirit of greed: “[All] Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit...” and to keep us from hearing those frightening words, “You fool,” from the mouth of Jesus.
 

Meditation

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Reprinted from  Opening the Word at Formed.org .
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