The poor in spirit are those who are so detached from
wealth, from social position, and from earthly knowledge that, at the moment
the Kingdom of God demands a sacrifice, they are prepared to surrender all.
Fulton J Sheen The Cross and the Beatitudes,
1937: 54
There is a profound difference in quality between the
possessions that we need and use, and actually enjoy, and the accumulation of
useless things that we accumulate out of vanity or greed or the desire to
surpass others
Fulton J Sheen Way to Happiness,
1954: 45
The world around us tells us constantly that if you want to
be happy, to be yourself fully and most really then what you need is more
stuff: a new car, a mobile phone. It’s the latest model – it’s been improved,
you can’t do without it! The world tells us this and we listen, we take it in
and we do what it says. We all of us do this, I’ve done it myself. It says you
can have what you want TODAY, we’ll even lend you the money for it and charge
you an interest rate which is usurious and wrong. It will make you and your family
happy, in a way that nothing else can.
Nothing could, in fact, be further from the truth. Salvation
by stuff has never and will never work. It leaves us empty, craving more and
more, never satisfied. Hence Our Lord’s teaching in this morning’s Gospel: ‘Take
care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not
consist in the abundance of possessions.’ (Lk 12:15) Wanting more stuff is
never a good idea; Our Lord tells us this and warns us against it, and we do
not listen.
So He tells us a parable – there’s a man who’s got loads of
stuff, he’s well-off in worldly terms, he has done well. All he’s interested in
is keeping his stuff, building bigger barns into which to put stuff, so that he
can sit back, and relax and take life easy.
Then he dies, quite suddenly, and learns that important
lesson: you can’t take it with you when you go – you can’t put pockets in your
shroud, and when you are dead then stuff doesn’t really help you. It may buy you
a swankier funeral, a more expensive coffin, a more expensive hearse to transport
your dead body, but basically you are dead, and even if you spend thousands of
pounds having your head frozen in liquid nitrogen, you are still dead. Money and
stuff can’t help you with that. It has never been able to, nor will it. So Our
Lord encourages us to be rich towards God, and to turn away from the world and
its vanity.
In St Paul’s letter to the Colossians, just after this morning’s
second reading finishes we read this:
‘Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy
and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience,
bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving
each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above
all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And
let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in
one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching
and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and
spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do,
in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to
God the Father through him.’ (Col 3:12–17)
This is the life which stores up treasure in heaven, when we
have ‘Set our minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth’
(Col 3:2) This is what a Christian life really looks like, when lived out in
the world. This is the sort of radically different life which can and does both
change and transform the world: offering it a way that is different to the way of
stuff. It is the way of love and forgiveness, of knowing that as Christians that
we are loved and forgiven, no matter who we are or what we’ve done. That we can
be a community which lives out this radical love and forgiveness in the world
to offer it a new way of being, which turns the ways and values of the world on
its head. It is that radical, that revolutionary, and that revolution has to
start right here and today. We are listening to Our Lord speaking to us through
His Scriptures; he calls us to live this life for our own good and the glory of
the God who made us, the God who loves us, and the God who saves us: to be free
from the tyranny of stuff and sin, and to live for him.
This then is what the Church is meant to look like, and be, and
live out in the world, like a lamp set upon a lamp stand or a city upon a hill,
shining, attractive, a light amidst the darkness of this world, a radical alternative,
life in all its fullness. So let’s live it, together.
That is why we have come here, today, to be fed in word and sacrament,
to be fed by God, to be fed with God, with His Body and Blood and His Word, so that
it may nourish us and prepare us for heaven, so that it can transform our human
nature and fill us with the Divine life of love and forgiveness, which we can start
living out here and now and change all the world, so that it may believe and be
transformed to sing the praise of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy
Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just all might, majesty,
glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.
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