Homily: Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time: 2007

Brothers and sisters, "Vanity of vanities: all things are vanity!" This is an interesting and great philosophy, rooted in wisdom, but it is not the last word on the subject. It is wise, because it takes profundity to know vanity at all. The seventeenth-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal said, "Anyone who does not see the vanity of life must be very vain indeed."

You work and you work and you work and for what? And soon or late, young or old, you must come to die. To whom will all your pent-up wealth go? (That's assuming it hasn't been taken from you at some point previous.) Your children, you say. But what if you don't have children? What if you have children, but they take your legacy for granted? What if they and their spouses think of you, if they think of you at all, as "that old crank"? Vanity. All things are vanity.

But it's not the last or even the best solution. Consider the life of Job. "Even if He slay me, yet will I trust Him." Life is suffering, but it has meaning because it is from Him, the giver of life. So even in our darkness we can praise the Lord. "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord."

And finally, there is the revelation of the Song of Songs, where life is love. Life has meaning because you love and are loved, no matter how many years of life you had, no matter how much honor with which you were recognized, no matter how much money you made. "Sterner than death is love, stronger than a rushing river. Were one to offer all he had to purchase love, he would be roundly mocked."

But how do we love and how do we attract love? Why, through Him who is love itself. And if you need more practical advice, there's St. Paul in the second reading. Don't be materialistic. Don't be greedy. Be honest. Be pure. Don't engage in premarital sex. Don't look at pornography. Honor your body and don't give in to your baser passions. Don't be arrogant and proud. It doesn't matter if your neighbor is poorer than you, darker (or lighter) than you, more foreign than you, more (or less) overtly religious than you. Here we are all one. Here we are all in the same boat, the boat they used to call the barque of Peter. Peter, the first pope, and by analogy, all his successors. Listen to them.