18th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Eccl 1:2, 2: 21-23; Col 3: 1-5, 9-11; Luke 12: 13-21
Dc. Larry Brockman
 “Vanity of vanities! All things are vanity”. Sounds cynical, doesn’t it?Â
And yet, Jesus makes the same point in the Gospel. First He says: “Ones life does not consist of possessions”. Then He tells the parable of the rich farmer who tried to store up treasure on earth so that he could “eat, drink, and be merry” for many years. But God called the man that very night so that his long range plans counted for nothing. That, indeed, is vanity.  Â
If you step back for a moment and look at your life, what do you see as your priority in life? Some people sacrifice living life for a long time so that they can have a comfortable life later, as if a good life does consist in having possessions. That’s what the people in both the First reading and the Gospel parable did. They worked hard and tirelessly for possessions, but ended up leaving it all to someone else who had not labored for it because they died before they could benefit from their wealth.  Â
At first, the possessions part of Jesus words seems to be the primary message- don’t hoard, because you just never know when the end will come. Indeed, all the gifts that we have, no matter how they were obtained, are God’s gifts to us. They are not of our own making, but rather, they are the fruits of God’s gifts of talent and energy that He has given us. So, we do need to be generous and share such possessions, rather than hoard them for later.    Â
But that is not the only danger of such a priority on life. You see, there are other, more subtle dangers. When Jesus says “Life does not consist of possessions”, we immediately jump on the “possessions” part of His statement. But what really matters is the “life” part, because if life does not consist of possessions, then just what does life consist of?  Â
Life, it seems to me, is what Jesus wants us to live for. What is it about life that we all live for? Well, it is family and relationships; it is an appreciation of the wonders of God’s creation; and it is an active involvement in something else other than oneself. That’s what makes life worth living.  Â
When our priority in life is working for “things”, or hoarding “things”, or even using things; then we are self centered, and that is not living life. Life is involvement in God’s creation- an active and an interactive way of being. Life is using the talents God gave us to make the world a better place; it is sharing ourselves with others; and it is loving relationships that last. God, after all, is interactive, and he formed us in his image and likeness so that we would be interactive as well. He did not make us so we could become islands unto ourselves.  Â
Now one of the biggest problems with centering our lives on things, is that it can derail us from actually living the interactive life God intended for us. If we fall into a pattern of life that lacks such interaction with each other, we can actually lose our ability to “live” life. Why? Because we can be so set in our ways that we can’t change. We no longer interact; and we can find it hard to start to do so again. We become the proverbial Mr. Scrooge and as Charles Dickens famous story so clearly established, that was no way to live life.  Â
But, that is not the only hidden problem with a priority on oneself. Because when we fail to live “life” as God intended, we miss the whole point of life. We miss the experiences and joys that make life worth living. That danger can be summed up in the last sentence of today’s Gospel, when Jesus ends the parable by calling the rich farmer a fool for putting all his time and energy into uselessly hoarding what he had. But then Jesus adds this: “Thus it will be for all who store up treasure for themselves, but are not rich in what matters to God”Â