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Hearts of Prayer: Sacred Liturgy - Homilies |
Hidden with Christ in god
Homily for
Sunday, August 5, 2007- 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
Fr. Joseph Rogers
Eccl 1:2, 2:21-23; Ps
90; Col 3:1-5, 9-11; Lk 12:13-21
As we peer at the construction in the back of the Church I am
reminded of the first words of John Paul II as he assumed the Chair
of Peter: “Open wide the doors to Christ!” I can sense God’s Servant
John Paul looking down on us and smiling. My brothers and sisters,
we have no doors! We’ve totally removed them! We are totally open to
Christ! Let’s listen and see what the Holy Spirit will do with us.
The Gospel of Luke is often referred to as the Gospel of the poor.
Mary, the mother of Jesus, declares herself the “lowly handmaid of
the Lord” and proclaims “the hungry [are] filled with good things”
and “the rich are sent away empty.” In the Sermon on the Plain Luke
records “Blessed are the poor.” Matthew states “Blessed are the poor
in spirit.” The poor are blessed, according to Luke, and he means
the materially poor. Of the four gospels, the most beautifully
written, the one composed with the most elegant Greek is that of St.
Luke. According to tradition, Luke was a doctor and a Greek. To
write the way he did means he was well educated. The poor in his day
were not well educated. Luke was a rich man, an accomplished man,
and he understood well the temptations of the well-to-do, of the
well-educated, those who have it all. He understood that riches can
make us foolish: the fool is the one who forgets about God and
credits his success and achievement to himself, who, like the rich
fool in the Gospel today, bases his life on a single word: “my” – my
life, my land, my barns, my harvest, my grain. . .
In the discourse prior to the parable the person asking the question
calls Jesus “Teacher” – didaskale – a rabbinic title. Jesus responds
to him as “Friend” – but in the Greek the word is: anthrope – “Man.”
Jesus locates the entire discussion regarding inheritance and
possession “in the beginning” by referring to “man.” He brings us to
Genesis 2, where the Lord-God makes man from the clay of the earth,
breathing the breath of life into him, making him a living being, a
nephesh hayah. Jesus is reminding us that all we have, we have
received from God. Man has received his life, his nephesh, from God.
That word, nephesh, is later translated into Greek as psuche (where
we get the word psychology). Literally, in the text, the rich fool
speaks to his psuche, his nephesh, and asks what he should do with
all of his possessions. My sisters and brothers, his psuche is not
his own. He is a creature; he will die. In the Lord’s response –
“man” – he awakens in us another passage: “Lord, what is man that
you are mindful of him? For you have made him little less than the
gods” (Ps 8). We are the image of God. We are placed at the center
of creation as stewards of all that God has created. And that’s a
blessing. If we were made simply to possess things, then this world
would be enough; material reality would be our sole preoccupation;
the sole arbiter of society would be power. Nietzsche and Marx would
be right – but they’re not. The material world cannot satisfy us.
We are so blessed as Americans. Truly we enjoy so many freedoms, but
beneath the frenetic lifestyle that our culture promotes there lies
a deep despair, a despair that keeps us on the move all the time,
the TV on, something to distract us, running from one thing to the
next, afraid of the mantra that resonates in the despair of the
secular world: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. There is nothing
new under then sun.” It is all vanity, my brothers and sisters. Have
you heard that cry in your own heart? The author of the Book of
Ecclesiastes wrote in the 3rd century BC, about 300 years before
Christ. He lived in a Jewish world being invaded by the “secularism”
of the Greeks. He had seen it all. A culture without God is vanity.
It is all worth-less. We have all walked the way of the fool. We
have all heard the mantra while driving on the beltway, alone in the
evening at home . . . and we wonder if there is there anything new
under the sun.
But there is something new under the sun. There is one thing that is
new. And that one thing is the death and resurrection of Jesus
Christ. We may live in a “vanity of vanities” world but we know that
Jesus Christ is risen! There is something new under the sun! God is
with us! The Son shines in the darkness! By the Incarnation of Jesus
Christ all the ordinary circumstances of our lives have become
pathways to God. All that is good, all that is true and noble can be
offered to God through the baptismal priesthood. And this truth,
this reality, this way of being with God is ours as Christians. My
brothers and sisters, that means everything matters! It all matters!
Because it all matters to God! And that means we can walk in the
work-a-day world, the “vanity of vanities” world but live
differently. We can walk peacefully, serenely, and with joy because
our lives are “hidden with Christ in God.” By faith and baptism we
are not bound to the vanity of daily life – God is with us, right
where we are – and we are with Him. That means we have a different
mantra, a mantra that echoes in our hearts, that is stronger, deeper
and greater then the mantra of despair. We sing the mantra of the
new man: “Blessed are you, Lord-God – of all creation – through your
goodness we have this bread to offer!” Everything we have is given.
It is all gift. The “poor” are those who understand this truth. Luke
understood this. Jesus calls it being rich in God. Blessed are the
poor.
Rev. Fr. Joseph Everett
Rogers is a Priest at the Pontifical North American College
in Rome for the
Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. He is a Graduate of Notre Dame
University, with an MA from the John Paul Institute for Marriage and
Family. He was ordained a Priest on May 26, 2007.
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