Prove your faith. Send me money: Mass Readings & Reflection on Feast of St John Mary Vianney & Jesus teaching on wealth

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year C    4 August 2013
St. John Mary Vianney, Priest (1786-1859) - Memorial
 
First Reading from Old Testament Book of Ecclesiasticus 1:2.2:21-23. 
(The Wisdom of Jesus Ben Sirach)

Vanity of vanities, says Qoheleth (the Preacher), vanity of vanities! All things are vanity!

For here is a man who has laboured with wisdom and knowledge and skill, and to another, who has not laboured over it, he must leave his property. This also is vanity and a great misfortune.
For what profit comes to a man from all the toil and anxiety of heart with which he has laboured under the sun?
All his days sorrow and grief are his occupation; even at night his mind is not at rest. This also is vanity.

Psalm 90

You turn man back to dust,

Saying, "Return, O children of men."
For a thousand years in your sight
Are as yesterday, now that it is past,
Or as a watch of the night.
You make an end of them in their sleep;
The next morning they are like the changing grass,

Which at dawn springs up anew,
But by evening wilts and fades.
Teach us to number our days aright,
That we may gain wisdom of heart.
Return, O LORD! How long?
Have pity on your servants!
 
Fill us at daybreak with your kindness,
That we may shout for joy and gladness all our days.
And may the gracious care of the LORD our God be ours;
Prosper the work of our hands for us!
Prosper the work of our hands!
 
 
Coloss. 3:1-5.9-11. 

Brothers and sisters:  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.
For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory.
Put to death, then, the parts of you that are earthly: immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and the greed that is idolatry.
Stop lying to one another, since you have taken off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed, for knowledge, in the image of its creator.
Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all and in all.

 

Gospel of St. Luke 12:13-21. 

Someone in the crowd said to Jesus, "Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me."

He replied to him, "Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?"

Then he said to the crowd, "Take care to guard against all greed, for though one may be rich, one's life does not consist of possessions."

Then he told them a parable. "There was a rich man whose land produced a bountiful harvest.

He asked himself, 'What shall I do, for I do not have space to store my harvest?'

And he said, 'This is what I shall do: I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones. There I shall store all my grain and other goods

and I shall say to myself, "Now as for you, you have so many good things stored up for many years, rest, eat, drink, be merry!"

But God said to him, 'You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?'

Thus will it be for the one who stores up treasure for himself but is not rich in what matters to God."

 

 Commentary:

 The minister was preoccupied with thoughts of how, after the worship service, he was going to ask the congregation to come up with more money than they were expecting for repairs to the church building. Therefore, he was annoyed to find that the regular organist was sick and a substitute had been brought in at the last minute. The substitute wanted to know what to play. "Here's a copy of the service," he said impatiently. "But you'll have to think of something to play after I make the announcement about the finances."

 During the service, the minister paused and said, "Brothers and Sisters, we are in great difficulty; the roof repairs cost twice as much as we expected, and we need $4,000 more. Any of you who can pledge $100 or more, please stand up." At that moment, the substitute organist intoned the national anthem. Almost everyone in the church instinctively stood up. And that is how the substitute became the regular organist!

This week all the remaining clergy of the Diocese of Parramatta will be assembling to dine sumptuously and drink copious quantities of free wine as they toast the ascetical and demonised patron saint of all diocesan priests, John Mary Vianney, the famed nineteenth century parish priest of a small town in France called Ars.

Today is a day of mixed feelings. I used to look up to him but… Well, I have told you that story in an earlier post. When I think of Saint John Mary Vianney I think of Fr John O’Neill at Doonside. This priest whom my parents drove from Springwood to the town next to Blacktown each Sunday to hear his tirades against his Bishop and fellow priests (most of whom he was right to criticise but for different reasons). Bishop Bede Heather is yet to be gaoled for his protection and concealment of known paedophiles who infiltrated his Diocese for decades.  He was also having an affair while diocesan Bishop (read about my story as a resident in his house in unholysilence.com).

Anyway John O’Neill is also a close friend and ally of one of the notorious sexual predators I wrote about in Unholy Silence and for that association I was always suspicious of him (that and other aspersions cast against him by other homosexual priests).

Anyway he single-handedly turned my parents (well Mum mostly) into very negative, fault-finding condemners of the imaginary “trendy theology”. His assessment of my seminary and those who taught there (which may have been close to the mark) distorted their version of Catholic orthodoxy and turned my youngest sisters against the Catholic religion and probably contributed to converting my two youngest brothers Brendan and Sean into neo-conservatives and led them to Wagga Seminary to embark on a theological education that screwed them right up.

Brendan is currently still a priest (in a two horse town called Howlong) walking around in black & white collar (even when he comes home to visit his parents) and Sean is a lawyer father of seven.

Enough said about John Vianney, let’s turn to the Gospel.

My wife and I were watching a TV Mass this morning and the priest was discussing this Gospel warning people against the accumulation of wealth and then a message flashed on the screen asking people to send money to support this TV evangelism by donating by bank deposit or credit card to this account number or call this free call number. The irony was not lost on my beautifully perceptive wife who commented, “He is talking about giving up wealth and look at that!”

Yes the message of Jesus is being ignored by the men who profess to live evangelical poverty. I am sure there are many who do live a life of deprivation (like John Vianney apparently did and I am sure Fr John O’Neill at Doonside believes he is too.

But no priest I know is ever worried about where his next meal is coming from. He is not nervous to open the mail in case that electricity bill comes in, or anxious about how he is going to pay for his kid’s educational expenses. There are so many things when I was living as a priest I was oblivious to about the pressures faced by normal people as I preached about sacrificial giving to our Diocesan Development Fund three times a year!

It was only later towards the end of my vocational crisis when I saw the extreme opulence of the lifestyle of Bishop Anthony Fisher in his penthouse suite of the former Mercy Convent in Parramatta (overlooking Parramatta’s Victoria Park (home of many vagrants and mentally ill), with his private chef (George) cooking up Scotch fillet for his fellow clerical diners that the penny dropped! It was his comments about the vintage wine that accompanied the lavish meal that offended me. I could not imagine our Lord living that way.

So what did Jesus mean in his comments we read today?
I will leave it to someone more spiritual than I to elucidate for you:

 

 Saint Basil (c.330-379), monk and Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, Doctor of the Church  Homily 6, on wealth ; PG 31,261f.

 

Building other barns

 

“You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?” This man's behaviour is more to be mocked than eternal punishment is severe. Indeed, what sort of plans are jostling within the mind of this man who is going to be taken from this world so soon?

“I will pull down my barns and build bigger ones.”

Now, I would gladly say to him: Well done! For the barns of unrighteousness are only worth pulling down. Destroy from top to bottom what you have built up dishonestly. Let those wheat stocks of yours, that have never brought comfort to anyone, disintegrate. Do away with all the buildings that shelter your greed, pull down their roofs, overturn their walls, expose the mouldering grain to the sun, bring the wealth imprisoned within it out of its prison...

“I shall tear down my barns and build even larger ones.” Once you have filled these up in their turn, then what are you going to do? Will you pull them down to rebuild others once more? Is this a worse madness than to be endlessly tormented: to build tenaciously and at once pull down? If that is what you want, you have the houses of the poor for your barns. “Build up treasures in heaven” : what is stored there “neither moth nor decay destroy, nor thieves break in and steal” (Mt 6,20).