3 August 2025 - 18th Sunday ‘C’
Qo 1:2; 2:21-23; Col 3:1-5, 9-11; Lk 12:13-21
HOMILY
‘Vanity of vanities,’ said Ecclesiastes. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. The book of Ecclesiastes, also called Qohelet, is disconcerting at first glance. This beloved Qohelet seems, to put it mildly, disillusioned. On the other hand, in some ways he seems quite modern. You could say he's a bit of a protester, a '68er' of the third century BC... unless you consider him a postmodernist!
Contrary to those who think that to be a believer one must talk about God all the time, this author is the best representative of the Old Testament tradition known as the Wisdom Writings. These authors are convinced that human life is governed by a set of laws of which God is the ultimate cause, since he is the creator of the world. Instead of always being on the lookout for a new ‘divine revelation’, these ‘wise men’ believe that in order to live ‘wise’, one must search for the deeper meaning of things, a meaning that is mostly hidden from all men and women. These wise men ask themselves, first and foremost, the question of the meaning of LIFE; and they ask it in a very general, universalist way, without any special reference to the people of Israel. Finally, what appears to be a very un-religious book is full of divine wisdom. We also know that the most religious people are not necessarily those who speak most easily and most often about God, but those who live according to God by living the best human life possible that God has given them to live.
Human life is made up of many things: work, wealth, pleasure, pain, poverty, joys, disappointments, religion, time, etc. What is the meaning of all these things? In the end, only one thing is important: life itself. What fills life is certainly important, but it would be foolish to seek all these things if we forget the only thing that matters: life itself. This is the experience of Job, one of the best representatives of this great wisdom tradition. Job makes the extraordinary discovery that, after losing everything that filled his life: wealth, friends, family, health, he is still alive; and he can then find all these realities he has lost and truly enjoy them, freely, for the first time.
This very human wisdom of Ecclesiastes is, in fact, an excellent introduction to the wisdom that Jesus gives us in today's Gospel. The rich farmer in Jesus' parable was only concerned with increasing and preserving his wealth; he forgot to live, he forgot that one reality that continues to exist after our existence here on earth. He forgot to live because he forgot about others. He seems to exist only for himself. He speaks as if he were the only person on earth. Everything in his brief statement is in the first person: "What should I do? This is what I will do: I will tear down my barns, build bigger ones, and pile all my grain and goods into them. Then I will say to myself... Rest, eat, drink, enjoy life. He speaks as if he has received nothing from others and as if he has not become rich through the work of his servants. He is a terribly lonely man.
He is alone even in the use of his wealth. His only concern is to accumulate more and more. It does not even occur to him that the poor and hungry might need the wealth accumulated in his storehouses. His madness lies in not understanding that all men—and all peoples—are interdependent. This folly has brought humanity to the brink of catastrophe, with poor countries becoming poorer and rich countries becoming increasingly addicted to unbridled consumption. The same division is accentuated within each country, even within poor countries.
Forgetting this supreme value of our own lives leads to a lack of respect for the lives of others. Greed leads to fighting—even between brothers, as in the case of the man who asks Jesus to resolve his inheritance problem—and to oppression, injustice, and wars. Hence the importance of St Paul's exhortation to the Colossians to center the meaning of their existence not on perishable things - which he calls the old man - but on the reality of the new life received in its fullness in baptism. Then everything that can separate us loses all its importance: there are no longer Greeks or Jews, Christians or Muslims, Easterners or Westerners, barbarians or civilized people. There is only Christ, who is the fullness of life in everyone.
We Christians are too quick to spout pretty phrases. Somehow we talk too easily about God and spiritual things. The realistic wisdom of Qohelet, taken up again by Jesus and St Paul, reminds us that, above all, by living and helping others to live human life to the full as God intended and created it, we will not only attain our own happiness here below and in the hereafter, but we will also contribute to the establishment of the Kingdom of God.
Armand VEILLEUX