Serving God and neighbor

Meditation by Father Flavien Zolabi SJ

Readings: Qo 1,2.2, 21-23; Col 3.1-5.9-11; Luke 12, 13-21

Dear brothers and sisters, the texts of today's liturgy, the 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Liturgical Year C, invite us to meditate on our relationship with material possessions and the ultimate end of our lives. The first reading, taken from the Book of Qoheleth, or Ecclesiastes, begins with the famous slogan: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” The sacred author expresses a kind of disillusionment. In fact, he discovers in earthly life, identical for the foolish and the wise, the ephemeral nature of all things. He sees everything as “vanity.” By its origin, the word Vanity indeed signifies that there is nothing stable, nothing that endures and can ensure security. Despite his human experiences, the author comes to the conviction that all is vanity. At the end of his earthly life, man takes with him none of the riches he may have amassed, perhaps honestly and at the cost of enormous sacrifices.

In the Gospel, Jesus seems to use the same language. The story opens with a man who feels wronged by his brother in the division of their inheritance, asking for justice. Jesus begins by addressing this man who wants to make him the judge of material matters, then, for the benefit of all, he warns against the temptation to accumulate fleeting and inconstant earthly riches for oneself, at the expense of the only imperishable good: the love of God and neighbor. Jesus illustrates his teaching with the example of a rich man. This man has worked his fields well. The harvest is abundant. And he is concerned about how to keep all his wealth for himself. So he says to himself, "...I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and all that I have. Then I will say to myself, 'You have plenty of grain laid up for many years; “Rest, eat, drink, enjoy life.” Faced with his riches, this rich man does not think of his neighbor and forgets God. He is self-centered. He forgets that everything is vanity, as Qoheleth says, that is to say, fleeting and inconstant. In reality, like Saint Paul in the second reading, Jesus does not invite an ideological contempt for earthly goods, but condemns the desire to live only for oneself in indifference to others and to God. It is from this perspective that Pope Francis never tired of continually warning us against egocentrism, which is a disease of our time. In his message of July 6, 2022, addressed to the young people participating in the “European Youth Conference” in Prague from July 11 to 13, he invited them to “have knowledge of the beginning and the end of everything; to put our feet firmly planted on the ground, but with a broad gaze, open to the horizon, to the sky.” May the Lord grant us to have a proper relationship with the goods of this earth, that is to say, to consider them as means to serve God and neighbor, and not to absolutize them.