For a number of years, our family had a dairy farm in western Washington about100 miles south of Seattle. As a “gentleman farmer” my dad used to have a T-shirt that said, “A big barn and a plump wife never did any man harm.”
Big barns are pretty cool. It’s amazing how some of them were built in the early 20th century. Not only are they incredibly functional, they are truly works of art. And by and large a big barn never did a man harm.
So what’s the deal then with the parable of the man who had the bountiful harvest and built himself some big barns to put it in. Why is he called a fool?
It’s pretty simple really. There is nothing wrong with a bountiful harvest or a big barn to put it in. Where gentleman farmer in the parable went wrong is that he saw his wealth as an end unto itself. He put his trust in the things of this world and forgot that our true destiny of communion with God transcends anything this world has to offer.
Wealth in and of itself is neither good nor bad. It simply gives you more options. But as our misguided farmer found out, at the end of the day we really don’t own anything. It is all a gift given to us to use for the time that we are on this earth. We are stewards, not owners.
They say you spend the first third of your life wanting stuff, the second third accumulating stuff and the last third trying to get rid of stuff. Having just turned 60, I’m finding that there is a lot of truth to this. The goal at this stage is to shed as much stuff as practical and to grow rich in what matters to God.
So what matters to God?
Well, if we pay attention to Our Lord in the today’s gospel, its not the stuff we’ll leave behind, but the relationships with God and others that really matter. We don’t take any of the stuff with us, but we do take our relationships. For us Catholics that relationship is characterized by full communion with Christ and his Church – union at the very level of being. Who I am, united with who God is and who you are. It is these relationships that we call full communion that we carry with us into eternity.
That is what matters to God.