18th Sunday in Ordinary Time, C July 31, 2022
Fr. Alexander Albert St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette
What’s the plan? Get a decent job, make enough money to get a home, raise a family, save up, and retire? And then what? Relax, go on trips, enjoy nice things? Sounds pretty good doesn’t it? That’s kind of the standard American vision of a good life. But is it the Catholic one?
Well, what does St. Paul say about it? “If you were raised with Christ, seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Think of what is above, not of what is on earth.” Then of course there’s Jesus’ parable about this man who dies the very night he finally gets to retire. What’s going on? Am I about to tell a church full of retired people that retirement is bad? Not really, but kind of.
The problem is that it’s not as simple as saying whether it’s bad or good. What Jesus and St. Paul are getting at is not actually about wealth. It’s about motivation, purpose, priorities. What’s wrong with what this rich man does? Nothing says that he broke any commandments. So why is Jesus being so harsh? Because the man has lived for the wrong thing: himself. “Rest, eat, drink, be merry.” Those aren’t bad things. In fact all of them are good, necessary, and on some occasions God commands people to do these things.
The problem is that none of them are the point of life. That’s what Jesus is getting at with saying he was not “rich in what matters to God.” What matters to God is what is truly good for us. What matters to God is that we fulfill our ultimate purpose: happiness, communion… love. Yes, God made us to be happy. Original Sin made that more difficult in this world, but the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus made it possible again in a limited way in this life and in an eternal way in the next. Getting to that happiness requires grace, it requires dealing honestly with sin and, most importantly, it requires repeatedly making the choice to do what leads to real happiness… to authentic spiritual joy.
Yes, a comfortable life full of good food, drink, and fun make us happy in a way, but does it last? Where is that happiness when we die? Gone. And everything that contributed to that happiness, to whom will it belong? That’s Jesus’ point. That’s the point of the first reading… everything is vanity – not obsessed with their looks, but vain as in the sense of pointless – everything is vain because it all disappears when death comes along. But if we are rich in what matters to God, if we build happiness on eternal things, then we transcend that vanity and find that even death cannot take the joy away.
This is the reason for St. Paul’s harsh commands: “Put to death, then, the parts of you that are earthly: immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and the greed that is idolatry.” This list is full of things that promise happiness and even actually give some of it, but it do not last and it is not authentic. Greed in particular is not just the desire to have money, it is the unceasing desire for more. It is the sense that “just this much more and I’ll be set.” The problem is that when we get there, we just want more. Paul calls this greed “idolatry” because it really reveals that we don’t actually trust God. To say “this much more and I can provide for myself” is really a version of saying “I don’t actually need to depend on God, I’m just about to be able to take care of myself.”
It’s also idolatry because of what is says about our reason for working. Why do you work? That goes back to my opening question, what’s the plan? To make enough money to make myself and my loved ones comfortable. But your comfort… doesn’t really matter. It’s not the point of your life and it will always fade. What’s the right reason to work? For love. Love of God, love of neighbor. Work because God made us to work in the garden even before sin was a thing. Work because, by your labor you provide some good or service for another person made in God’s image. Work because you contribute to the good of others and because you are able to provide for loved ones.
This is where we get to question of retirement. What is it? No longer working? Okay. If your reason for working is to get comfort and pleasure, it makes sense to stop working once you have enough for that. But if your reason for working is love… why stop? Do we really think that, once we get to a certain age, it’s okay to not love anymore?
I hope not! The call of a Christian is to love always. It’s to keep growing in love until you die. We must never “retire” from loving. So is retirement ever okay? That depends on what you mean. If retirement means you spend the rest of your life being comfortable, then no. If retirement means you stop working at a specific career so that you can spend your time working for love in a different way, then yes, why not? It can be downright holy to get away from a certain kind of labor so that you have the ability to “work” in a more authentically loving way.
And if your age and physical ability prevents you from working, of course it’s right to stop. All of us will have to learn or re-learn the lesson that we are dependent on others, ultimately dependent on God. But even then, we are not exempt from the command to love God and neighbor. That labor of love simply changes. It adapts to what we’re capable of. Prayer, redemptive suffering, sharing of wisdom, direct expressions of love through quality time – these can all be works of love.
There is no time or place in this life when we are “done.” If your plan is to get to that place, you have fallen for a lie and a trap. Being rich in what matters to God is about the continual striving to grow in faith, hope, and love. Sometimes, that is getting and using wealth for good things. A good home, education, medical treatment, a beautiful church, outreach to the poor – these things take money. Even quality time found in rest or vacation can be love. Money can be used for love, but is all too often a way to avoid the risk of love. So, growing in love often requires us to give away our wealth. It’s not really ours anyway, it’s God’s.
But the point isn’t that it’s a sin to be rich – it’s very dangerous, but not necessarily a sin. The point is we should be rich in the right things: knowledge of the truth, habits of prayer and worship, real dependence on God, acts of mercy like evangelizing, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, enduring wrongs patiently. The rich man could have done these and become truly rich. The point is that money isn’t the point. Love is. God is. And the love that comes from God never retires.