18th Sunday in Ordinary Time ( C-cycle )
August 5, 2007

There is this story of a big spider which lived in the roof of an old house. One day, he decided to come and live a little lower down.  So he spun a thread and came sliding down and made a new web. He then began to catch more flies and proceeded to make himself fat. And because he became fat, he also became very stupid.  He was so pleased with himself that one day as he was walking around his web; he looked up and saw the thread going up in the air. “What is the use of that” he said and broke it.

 

Immediately, he went crashing down with his web to the floor beneath and died.  This story, like that of the gospel today, illustrates for us one of the dangers of excessive wealth; its tendency to blind.  For riches can blind us to what is real in life.

 

One example that comes to mind is what happens in Africa; - That continent has the ironic misfortune of being the poorest one but with the richest set of leaders.  Their names are familiar; Mombutu Sese Seko of the Congo, Idi Amin of Uganda, Nigeria’s own Mohamed Abacha and many others.  During their reign, each one of these leaders looted their countries wealth to the tune of billions of dollars. But at the end none of them ever had the opportunity to use the wealth they had accumulated or to pass them on to their dependants.

 

In the case of Mombutu as soon as he lost power and became sick, he flew into Algeria on his way to France where he had over ten mansions, but they would not even let him into the country. Neither would Switzerland where he had stashed over ten billion dollars. The Swiss banks kept the money, and he died penniless and alone.  The same kind of fate befell the other dictators.

 

I don’t know which is worse, the greed of these men or that of their bankers.  What happened to them is a clear example of the illusions created by excess wealth; - Yet even today, there many leaders in Africa who greedily are blindly following their example.

 

In today’s gospel, Jesus tells us the sad parable of the man who spends his life accumulating that which he cannot bring with him to judgment. When his life comes to an end, he has nothing to show before God.  This parable is important for us and it should make us ponder some questions “What do I have to show before God?” “Do I posses things, or do things posses me?”  When our happiness depends on our possessions, then we are letting our possessions control us.

 

For our society today, the risk of succumbing to the illusions of wealth is even greater. For one thing, there is a lot more wealth, and its spread is wider. For another we live in a consumer oriented society. At the very least, every 12 minutes of TV time is interrupted by messages telling us what we need to buy for happiness.  As a result we have a greater need to be careful. For our world today is filled with illusions. Illusions created by the mass media in which trivial things are exaggerated and great things are trivialized.

 

For example, on the same week that armed gunmen murdered a young priest Fr. Ragheed Ganni and three sub deacons right after Mass on Sunday, in the Mosul region of Iraq, and hundreds of Christians were killed in the Darfur region of the Sudan; These dramatic events, which spoke volumes about how the civil strife in Moslem countries is affecting their Christian communities was largely ignored by the media instead they concentrated on giving a minute by minute report on a model named Paris Hilton.  The scary part is that the media not only reports what is happening; they also create the reality that we live in. The impact they have on us is powerful, particularly on the young people.

 

As Pope John Paul II once observed, “If it doesn’t happen on television, it doesn’t happen.

 

For example a 2004 study on “body image and media” which interviewed 10,000 women in the U.S., Canada, Britain, China and Brazil found that only two percent of the women polled considered themselves beautiful. And it wasn’t just modesty. The media have set an impossible standard of beauty. And so most girls, no matter how lovely, feel they do not measure up. And today, cosmetic surgery has become very prevalent.  We are subjected to thousands of commercials each year, and these slowly build in us an illusion of what is real.

 

Today’s first reading says, “Vanity of Vanities!” Vanity means an illusion — appearances designed to deceive. And that is exactly what the media does today; - manufacture an illusion — and it does terrible damage. For it creates vanities in us.  First when we are young, the vanity of looks; - and as we get older and the law of gravity takes over and this vanity loses its hold, another vanity is created - the vanity of wealth.  And it this vanity that Jesus is warning about in the gospel; - That some can start to think that wealth gave so much security that they cannot let anyone else in, not even God, until like the big spider in the story, they are crushed by the weight of their own self-importance.

 

None of us knows our moment of death. As my grandmother used to say, “The young may die; the old must die”. When that moment comes, any illusions we have will fall away and we will see ourselves as we are.  Let us not wait until it is too late. Today is the time to ask ourselves, “What am I living for?” “Where do my standards come from?”

 

Now, don’t get me wrong. Money is important, but only for what it can do for us: - provide food, clothing, shelter and education for our families. It can help to spread the knowledge and service of Christ. It can also help us to help others.  But when we seek money mainly for power and pleasure as those African dictators did, then it becomes an evil.

 

For as Jesus stated through St. Paul in I Timothy, “The Love of money is the root of all evil”: And so, in the light of what Jesus tells us in today’s gospel, every one of us must do some hard thinking and some hard praying about our attitude toward money.  Do we use it wisely or does it rule us.  Do we serve God or mammon?

 

Jesus wants to free us from vanity so we can live for great things. Let us take up his offer.

 

God Bless you.