18th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Aug. 4, 2013
Collect
Eccl 1: 2; 2: 21-23
Col 3: 1-5, 9-11
Luke 12: 13-21
Ursulines, Willow Dr., New Rochelle
“Lord,
restore what you have created and keep safe what you have restored” (Collect).
One
of the more cynical bumper stickers I’ve seen over the years proclaims that
whoever possesses the most toys when he dies, wins.
Most
people will recognize that as “vanity of vanities” (Eccl 1:2), the biblical way
of saying “the most foolish thing you can imagine.”
 |
| Allegory of Avarice, by Jacopo Ligozzi, 1590 |
About
2 weeks ago the Times had a
front-page story about a wine storage facility in Manhattan that was heavily
damaged by Sandy’s storm surge.[1] Yes, there are people who invest so heavily
in vintage wines that they have to rent premium storage space, as others do
with the furniture that doesn’t fit in their apartment or the archives that
don’t fit in their office. With many of
the labels washed off in the flood waters, these unfortunates can’t tell their
$1,000 bottles from their $300 ones. One
poor chap claims to have lost $5.2 million-worth of wine. No doubt there are insurance policies for
such contingencies.
From
another point of view, all that wine is “vanity of vanities!” Perhaps we can imagine Jesus asking these
wine-stockers, “You fools who’ve stored up so much for many years of merriment,
to whom will all that belong—after a natural disaster or after you’re called to
account for your life?” (cf. Luke 13:19-20).
Jesus
advises all of us to store up treasure for eternity, to grow rich in God’s
sight. What such wealth is, our Collect
this morning subtly indicates. We pray
God the Father to keep safe what he has created and then restored. What he has created is the divine image in
each human person: an image created by
God, marred by our sins, restored by Christ.
Well did St. Irenaeus exclaim, “The glory of God is man fully alive!”
i.e., alive in Christ, reflecting all the glory of the divine image.
St.
Paul, too, speaks of the image of God in those who’ve been renewed in
Christ: “You have taken off the old self
with its practices and have put on the new self” (Col 3:9-10), like changing
from our dirty, sweaty work clothes into something clean and fresh. We religious richly symbolize this change of
self in our clothing ceremonies, or at least we used to, often quoting these
words of Paul or a similar passage from Ephesians (4:22-24).
To
the Romans Paul writes of those whom God “predestined to be conformed to the
image of his Son” (8:29), which means being re-created in the divine image,
restored to that image which God originally created in human beings. This image, like Christ himself, is destined
for glory (8:30). This Christ-image in
ourselves, and of course in all the disciples of the Lord Jesus, is our
treasure, to be stored up, preserved, polished, made ever more beautiful by our
ongoing transformation from sinners into saints.
Paul
tells us how that Christ image is put into us and refined: 1st, the negative step, the old via purgativa of
ascetical theology: “put to death the
parts of you that are earthly:
immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire…” (Col 3:5). In one of the verses we skipped over in this
reading, he lists specific vices “you must now put away: anger, fury, malice, slander, and obscene
language…” (3:8). And the reading
resumes with “Stop lying to one another…” (3:9).
2d
comes the positive step, the via unitiva,
if you will, by which we take on the image of Christ. Elsewhere Paul tells us to begin with
humility: “Have this mind in you which
was in Christ Jesus, … who emptied himself, taking the form of a slave. Humbly regard others as more important than
yourselves, each looking out … for the interests of others” (Phil 2:5,7,
3-4). Then, “Whatever is true, whatever
is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever
is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of
praise, think about these things” (Phil 4:8), and of course, act on these
virtues (cf. 4:9).
God
has begun this good work in us, and we pray he will continue it, keeping safe
what he has restored, until he brings it to perfection “when Christ your life
appears, [and] you too will appear with him in glory” (Col 3:4).
No comments:
Post a Comment