What Matters to God

August 5, 2007

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

By Rev. Joe McCloskey, S.J.

For here is a man who has labored with wisdom and knowledge and skill, and to another, who has not labored over it, he must leave his property. This also is vanity and a great misfortune. For what profit comes to a man from all the toil and anxiety of heart with which he has labored under the sun? Ecclesiastes 2: 21-22

But 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 the one who stores up treasure for himself but is not rich in what matters to God. Luke 12:20-21

Piety

St. Ignatius' Prayer for Generosity

Lord, teach me to be generous.
Teach me to serve you as you deserve;
to give and not to count the cost,
to fight and not to heed the wounds,
to toil and not to seek for rest,
to labor and not to ask for reward,
save that of knowing that I do your will.

Study

http://www.usccb.org/nab/080507.shtml

Naked we came into this world and naked we go out. You can not take it with you. All the labor and hard work we do stay when we go. We take with us what we have done out of love. Love is forever and where love is, our God is right there. All things are vanity. As a child, I realized that fame and fortune would all too quickly be forgotten by our world. What we have done out of love lives on both in us and in those we love.

Our happiness resides in the love we have for one another. We only hold unto what we have truly given away. We can only save our lives by losing them. The counter-intuitives of life are many. Our claim to fame in heaven is all we have suffered in the name of love. Sorrow and grief are conquered by love. There is no greater love than to give one’s life for the sake of another. We live best in those we love. You see it in parents with their children. Their happiness lives in the good of their babies.

Action

We belong to Christ. Paul in Ephesians tells us we are created by him, for him and in him. He is the best part of ourselves and we have our foothold in heaven in him and through him. We need to seek what is above in our lives hidden with Christ in God. When he comes again, we will appear with him in glory. All the ways we have been his hands and his feet are the apostolic works of our lives. What is hidden with our lives in Christ will be revealed. Getting rid of our old selves and putting on our new selves is what piety is all about. Study is what we learn from each other whether it is by books or the stories of our lives in what we share in the every day of love. Thus Christ is all and in all.

The parable of the rich man who put all his work into saving for a good life here on earth is the sad story of those who would make heaven out of what they can have for themselves right now. We need to realize that heaven belongs to what we do for each other. And the palace of nowhere is what heaven is all about in the paradise of the good that lives on in all the wonders of love that is forever. God has waiting for us so much more than we can imagine. But it is worth taking all the happiest moments of life as the measure of how much more God has waiting for us that goes beyond our fondest dreams.