The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
August 5, 2007
Homily for the Anglican Usage Mass
of the
St. Thomas More Society
celebrated at
St. Anthony of Padua Church, 1013 Wood Street
Scranton, PA
Luke 12:13-21
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Late Friday my family and I arrived back in Scranton from a week’s vacation in Vermont. We had stayed in a little town on the islands in Lake Champlain, an area of the country that is a cross between old farming communities and new summer resorts. When we were looking for a place to stay my wife contacted one person who said we could not rent their cottage because we have four children and the pitter patter of little feet would be annoying to the downstairs neighbors. We found when we got into town that that landlord was not the only property owner interested only in families without children. Right on U.S. Route 2 we saw a campground advertised ‘for adults only.’
I was reminded of the housing I had seen eleven years before when I was on my honeymoon in Florida. Attractive developments, invariably adjacent to a golf course, were advertised as exclusively for people over fifty. Signs elsewhere beckoned people to retire in the Sunshine State so they could enjoy golf year round without the inconvenience of having to drive to the golf course – or see such vulgarities as children’s apparel hanging from a clothes line. The ideal retirement is presented as living in a false community, a place where the focus in life is playing a child’s game, yet where one’s own grandchildren are not allowed to live.
The phenomenon of older Americans wishing to isolate themselves from generations younger than they are serves as an excellent example of how we can apply the parable we heard in today’s Gospel to the orientation of modern man. As you recall, Jesus talked of a man who stored up treasure for himself, who had so much stuff that he had to build larger barns to store all he had. He imagined to himself that with so much stored up he could take it easy and simply live off his accumulated wealth. The days of working were over, but he was in for a surprise. God came that very day to tell him the days of his life were over, too.
To understand this parable we must know that that the man’s wealth was not the problem. The man was condemned by God as a fool not because he had money and goods, but because he thought that his money and goods were for him. He was condemned as a fool because he thought that living in the lap of luxury was the pinnacle of life on earth. He was condemned as a fool because he forgot the commandment that he is to love his neighbor as he loves himself.
Very simply, the Christian life consists of service to God and one’s fellow man. There will never be a time in our lives when our obligation to love our neighbors will end. There will never come a time in our lives when we can legitimately devote ourselves to self-indulgence, a time to use the twilight of our lives sleeping-in in the morning, playing golf all day, and enjoying champagne every evening. Such selfishness is for children too young to know they won’t always get whatever they want whenever they want it. To be an adult and desire to live like an infant is moral perversion, a foolishness so profound that Jesus doesn’t even need to tell us that the man in the parable is hell bound.
Even though a life of laziness cut off from people younger than fifty does seem to be the goal of many Americans, a return to childhood is not appealing to everyone. A couple weeks ago I saw on the news the story of a man who retired to the coast. He was a doctor and could have spent the rest of his days indulging his appetites. But he noticed as he traveled about his town that there were a lot of poor people nearby and no medical clinics to serve them. So he began to volunteer his time caring for people in need of the skills he possessed. Soon he began to encourage other doctors on the golf course to do the same, because the needs were greater than he alone could provide for. Eventually a clinic staffed by retired doctors became a reality for the poor people who lived nearby this resort.
We might also consider our retired priests. Fr. Ed Scott was one of the men who said Mass for the St. Thomas More Society before I was ordained. He has said often over the past two years that he is as busy now as he was as the Pastor of a large parish. The need for priests is such that there will always be work for him to do, and fortunately for us, he is happy to continue to live his vocation, despite the fact that canonically he is too old to be a pastor. Fr. Ed Scott introduced us to Fr. Frank Skitzki, another retired priest living at the Villa on Green Ridge Street. Most mornings Fr. Frank can be found in the confessional at St. Anthony Church, hearing confessions before he assists me at the Daily Anglican Usage Mass.
My point is that even if we are not wealthy, each of us has gifts that God expects us to keep sharing with other people until the day we die. As Christians we do not work hard in our younger days in order that we can become rich enough never to work again. We work as hard as we can all of our lives because our neighbors need the particular gifts we possess, that by God’s grace we are able to share.
The parable of the rich fool is the story of a man who desired to keep his gifts to himself in order that he could be on a permanent vacation. He sounds almost typically American. To be Catholic, however, is to be counter cultural. We do not conform to the world, especially when the world tells us we can be in heaven before we die. In fact, if we think we can rest permanently before eternal rest is granted to us we may find that the price of such rest is our souls. The truth is, the Lord gave us only one day each week to rest. The other six days are to be spent working, to be spent serving, to be spent loving our neighbors as we love ourselves. May God grant us the grace to desire the work of the saints, who never tire doing good that others might live.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.