Living wisely

Time was when what gave sense and meaning to life on earth was belief in the afterlife. Today, it is here on earth that we search for the full meaning of all that is. Ours is a culture that keeps complete silence on what is essential to daily living.

Today's readings are an invitation to break this silence or to come to our senses and acknowledge not only what has been revealed to us by God in Jesus Christ, but also what is common sense. The first reading is from the Book of Ecclesiastes: "A man who has laboured wisely, skilfully, and successfully must leave what is his own to someone who has not toiled for it at all". These words could easily have been written by an atheist. It is important for us to measure to what extent this philosophy of Ecclesiastes defines our interior feelings and experience.

On that same wavelength, in the Gospel Jesus warns: "Be on your guard against avarice of any kind, for a man's life is not made secure by what he owns". Jesus is confronted with a conflict situation and asked to give advice. By answering: "Who appointed me your judge?" he is not denying justice where it is due. He is rather opening our eyes to see clearly that seeking justice with the wrong motivation can only perpetuate injustice.

Without prejudice to the political process and to the process of justice as it is administered in the world, we all were tempted to believe at some point that justice has been done in Iraq with Saddam's death sentence. But we all can see what is still going on there. True justice is never achieved merely by eliminating the perpetrator of injustice. This is where divine and human justice differ. That's why Jesus refuses to give advice and refers the question back to sender.

Further on, Jesus also told them a parable. In this parable, it's not work in itself or even hard working that is being questioned by Jesus, but the order of priorities. "For a man's life is not made secure by what he owns".

Writing in 1973, some 16 years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Alexander Solzhenitsyn had already pointed to the multiple impasse in which Western civilisation was finding itself: "A civilisation greedy for perpetual progress has now choked and is on its last legs... Bearing in mind the state of the people's morals, their spiritual condition and their relationships with one another and with society, all the material achievements we trumpet so loudly are petty and worthless".

This is exactly what today's liturgy is reminding us of. What are the considerations that are today guiding our lives and our country, at a time when our civilisation is at risk? Instead of considering ourselves pilgrims, we are always struggling to settle down without acknowledging that possessing can easily transform itself in being possessed. And that is enslavement. Believers or non-believers alike, our life here on earth is always in transit. And you never settle down in a transit hall at an airport!

The faith perspective on life is not a pie in the sky but keeps us with our feet to the ground in the firm belief that there is a beyond to our earthly life. We tend to be forgetful of all this. This explains why today we find it so difficult to be in tune with classics of Christian literature like, for example, Thomas à Kempis' The Imitation of Christ.

It is the temptation of a culture where the prevailing religion is the virtual divinisation of man, with the aim of building a heaven on earth and believing only in a secular salvation. It is a religion that refuses to lift up its head to the heavens. This is why the true enemy of belief is not atheism but idolatry, and the most serious challenge for Christianity is not the other great religions of the world but the fact that our religious sense is drying up. "Let your thoughts be on heavenly things", says Paul in Colossians. "You must kill everything in you that belongs only to the earthly life".

It is high time that we realise that for the Gospel, the opposite of living wisely is not being illiterate or uneducated, but simply being foolish.