Eighteenth Sunday of the Year - August 1, 2004

    The author of the book of Ecclesiastes, from which we just heard read the first reading, was evidently a man of wealth, education and leisure. As a man of the Hebrew culture of his time, he would share in the view that material prosperity is one of the chief signs of God’s blessing and approval. Yet this man was also very wise. He questioned the assumptions of his society and culture, something I keep hoping Catholics of our time would do more of, especially younger Catholics, who, these days easily – with cultural and social approval – question the Church on just about everything, and yet seem to accept unthinkingly cultural assumptions that run counter to the clearest common sense. So, the author of Ecclesiastes questioned the assumptions of his time and culture. For here he was, a man who had worked hard for all that he had, and he possessed a lot. He had labored, as he himself described it, “with wisdom and knowledge and skill”; and yet, in the end, he would have to leave all that he had managed to accumulate to another, to someone who perhaps would not be so wise or knowledgeable or skillful. Perhaps he would leave all his wealth and property to a spendthrift, to a son or daughter who would squander it all on nothing. So then, he asks himself, “What profit comes to a man from all the toil and anxiety of heart with which he has labored under the sun?” What profit indeed?
    Now if you read this whole book of Ecclesiastes -- and it wouldn’t take perhaps more than an half an hour to do so -- you would put the book down without a full answer to this question. The writer leaves the question unanswered. He didn’t have the knowledge to see the answer, but at least he was wise enough to ask the question: “Is it not a vanities of vanities to labor so hard to build up earthly happiness, and before you know it have to leave it and depart from this world, to who knows where. Is this not all so vain?:” Or, as another translation has it, Is this not a chasing after the wind? Fruitless, sad, meaningless?
    At least he was wise enough to see the problem. Not so the man in the story told by Jesus in today’s Gospel. He gave no consideration to his end. “Eat heartily, drink well. Enjoy yourself,” he exhorted himself. Now the author of Ecclesiastes is known throughout the Jewish and Christian traditions as a very wise man. But God said to this man, this one who convinced himself that having a lot, building bigger bins in which to store it all, this was enough -- God said to this man, “You fool! This very night your life shall be required of you. To whom will all this piled-up wealth of yours go? That is the way it works with the man who grows rich for himself instead of growing rich in the sight of God.”
    If the wise men and women of the ages learned to ask the pertinent question -- the real question of our lives -- so then it must be a wise thing to try to find the answer. For the question about the seeming vanity of life, the question that creeps up upon us when the strain of old age begins to lay hold of us, the question that flashes before us in the newspaper headlines of the latest tragedy-- the question is always there. How is that as we have hardly laid our hands to a task, before something is even finished being built, rust appears here and there, the paint peels, and the foundation cracks. Why are we continually disappointed when that new toy we’ve acquired grows old and boring in our hands? The question about the vanity of life -- and the hint, even within the question itself, of the possibility of meaning and purpose -- comes out of nowhere as we find ourselves afraid to look closely in the mirror lest we see another wrinkle around our eyes.
    That is that nagging question in the back of the mind. It is relentless because it must have an answer. It cries out in the human heart for an answer -- that is, in that human heart that is not filled with the manufactured distractions especially designed to avoid the question. Oh the heartache of it all, that even the most beautiful things of this world do not last, this cry would tell us. Even the best of happiness in this life becomes over the years a simple memory of another time.
    We ask with the writer of Ecclesiastes, Is it all, then, a chasing after the wind? Yes, of course it is. If, that is, we set our hearts upon that which will not last. For the brute fact is -- and never in history has it been harder for people to make themselves see this -- that everything of nature comes into being and goes out of being. Beginning and end. Birth and death. And the wise people among us assure us that the advice to relax, eat heartily, drink well, have fun -- this just will not do. What cruel advice this is to the wise heart that has not yet found the answer!
    Is there then any meaning or purpose to life when our attainments of happiness are so fragile, so often so temporary, often in the end disappointing? Is it not a vanity of vanities to build up a happiness from which we all have to depart in death? The question will not go away.
    But there is an answer. And it really is not so difficult. “Set your heart on what pertains to higher realms where Christ is seated at God’s right hand. Be intent on things above rather than on things of earth,” St. Paul exhorts us. He is telling us simply set our hearts on that which will not pass away. Why settle for something of earth, something that will not last, when you could have heaven, eternal happiness instead? The answer is simple to grasp once it’s pointed out to us, maybe more difficult to follow. But there it is nonetheless: desire and seek to lay hold of unending happiness. Make heaven your goal. Live by putting to death all that is death-dealing in you -- the lust for merely earthly things, the evil desires, the grasping and clawing after things, that in the end only bitterly disappoint us. Begin now to lay hold of that life planted in you by your baptism, which if desired and pursued leads to an unending life hidden with Christ in God.
    Why settle for what is passing away, when our hearts desire unending happiness? That’s the new form of the question for us. And our answer has to be, I won’t. I will not settle for what will not last. And I won’t cover up my true and deep hunger with the shallow admonition to eat and drink and be merry for tomorrow I die. No, the Christian in contrast desires heaven, eternal life. The Christian sets his heart on things above. And lo, a strange thing begins to happen. Though we fast on account of our sins and our spiritual need, we also feast. You could even say, we eat and drink; we are merry not because tomorrow we die, but because tomorrow -- an eternal unending tomorrow -- we, who set our hearts on things above, live. We live.