Ep 1: Jesus, Our Greatest Possession [Homily]

Homily by: Fr. Philip Merdinger
Recorded: 8/4/2019 (18th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C)
Gospel Reading: Luke 12:12-21
Location: St. Lawrence Catholic Church and Newman Center at the University of Minnesota

Reflection Question: What aspects of your life need to be reoriented or adjusted to make Jesus your greatest possession? 

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Dear brothers and sisters, the Gospel may seem kind of strange. I mean why not store up everything you've got? And when you die you can say to God, "Well, I stored them up so that my family, my spouse and children, will have something and lots to live on. So what's wrong with that?" At first glance, at least at first glance to me, the parable seemed kind of—why did he say it that way?
 
Sometimes in reading the Scriptures you need some other part of Scripture which helps to explain this part of Scripture. It's a typical way of looking at God's Holy word, since it covers so many different situations of life. Sometimes you have to look for what God's word says elsewhere that may help to bring light to this particular parable, which seems, as I said, on the surface of it to be kind of odd, at least for us. So I thought about it, and couldn't come up with anything.
 
But yesterday there was a wedding, and I was privileged to offer it. The couple had chosen for their middle reading one of St. Paul's letters, not the one today, but another one to the Philippians. And in it St. Paul says about himself, he says, "I press on with my life, though I haven't taken possession of God's power totally. But," he says, "I've been taken possession of by Jesus Christ." I think that's a way of looking at this parable. What's the issue with guy who accomplishes all these things and then ups and dies? Was Christ Jesus his possession or was it really all the stuff in the barns?
 
Now I'm wondering if that might be the way in which the Lord wants to address me and you, since we live in a land stuffed full of possessions. Who is really in possession of me? Is it simply myself? Is it my possessions? Do I see my possessions as the thing that really qualifies me as a success as a human being, or is Jesus Christ the one who takes possession of me, whom I say to you, "Come, Lord Jesus, and you have me as your closest ally, your closest friend, that you would take possession of myself"? That's what St. Paul was after. He said, "But I press on because I have been taken possession of by Christ Jesus."
 
So in the end it is a matter of possessions, then, at least if we read the Gospel that way today. It is a matter of possessions. What do I have? What do I do with? Sometimes I can be anxious about losing possessions, not having enough money for, for, for, for, and that's real. But above and beyond that, you know it's just so easy to fill our lives with those things. So we open the Sunday paper or whatever its equivalent is on the Internet, and we're looking for new things. Not that they're new; they only look that way. They're really just another edition of something.
 
And yet isn't there something in us? There's certainly something in me. I wonder what's new here. I wonder what I might have new here. I wonder if I might chuck something I have which is perfectly good because I want something new. So the drive for possessions, therefore, isn't simply, is it, the need to survive. Obviously one has to have possessions to survive of some sort of, but isn't there something else that moves within the human spirit? I think there must be, or else all those publications, they wouldn't be printed, because few people would read them. But they know, don't they, to say, "This is new. This article of clothing, this new car, this new whatever, washing machine, this is the thing. This is the new thing," because something inside me desires that.
 
And perhaps that's what Jesus is after in the parable. Perhaps that's the bigger [barns] of my life, is the desire, the eagerness, the yearning for, maybe even the lusting after new possessions, different possessions, better possessions, so that my life becomes something, as it were, influenced by that. So when I die the question is, to whom do these possessions go to? Well, they don't go to me. You can't take them with you.
 
So Jesus is saying, "Pay attention to yourselves. Who actually possesses you in terms of the things that I desire, that I look for, the new thing, perhaps, which I will see?" And Jesus says to us, "But when I am your possession, when I take possession of you, then there's a new orientation to life. Then there's me, there's a person. There's my life in you that really takes possession of you, and that possession no one can take from you. That possession you will carry to the kingdom when you die, for that possession no one can take from you. You can give it away, but no one can take it from you."
 
So St. Paul rejoiced in that. He said, "Whatever I want to do with my life"—and he did a lot with his life—"I want to be taken possession of by Christ Jesus." I encourage us to examine that in our hearts during this Mass. Is Jesus Christ, has He actually taken possession of me in the sense that I look him interiorly in my life? I look to him to be what I have, just as other people might open their garage door and look at all the stuff in it and say, "That's who I am. I'm that lawnmower."
Whereas the Lord says, "No. You can't take the lawnmower with you, but you can have me," that changes you from within and makes of you the fullest human person that you can possibly become. If we read the parable that way, then we will see that the man was, in the end, a fool, because he concentrated his life on acquiring things. But not for himself, because he was dispossessed in the end.
 
So dearest brothers and sisters, may we so live our lives that we're not dispossessed in the end, or even in the middle, but rather that our lives unfold in the person of Jesus Christ who brings to us Himself as the dearest love that we could ever possibly have, and in that love we become persons in the deepest possibly way.
 

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Fr. Philip Merdinger is the founder of the Brotherhood of Hope and the national chaplain of Saint Paul's Outreach (SPO).