18th Sunday in Ordinary Time – July 31, 2022

18th Sunday in Ordinary Time – July 31, 2022

18C22.    Ecclesiastes 1:2; 2:21-23.   This Old Testament book is saying that people often live their lives in a pointless, meaningless way.  In all this universe there is an endless circle of creation and destruction.  What is here today will be gone tomorrow, only to be replaced by something that will be gone the next day.  In a sense it is all in vain.  In itself and of itself, everything in this universe ends up being an endless cycle of pointlessness and meaninglessness.  God drains the worthlessness out of a life lived without God.  He is the point of it all.

Luke 12:13-21.  Someone asks Jesus that he help him to receive what he justly deserves.  However, Jesus is taken by the endless striving that he sees around him to live life just for the things of this world.  Jesus goes on relate a parable about a very successful, wealthy farmer who puts his sole faith in the material things of this world.  The value of material things terminates at the grave where we no longer possess even a body.  “Thus will it be for all who store up treasure for themselves but are not rich in what matters to God.”  True treasure is the treasure that is forever.

Colossians 3:1-5, 9-11.  “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.”  Of course, our bodies will die but our life continues on without our bodies.  If we live as if our life is our body, then we are acting as though we live a life that is pointless and in vain.  “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.”  Life is God, not our bodies and this earth.  “Christ is all and in all.”