18th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Cycle C
July 31,
2016 11:00am
Saint Matthew Parish, Baltimore
Viktor Frankl’s Insight
I am
sure that some of us have heard of the famous psychiatrist named Viktor Frankl.
Viktor
Frankl died in 1997 and was a survivor of a Nazi concentration camp. He has some wonderful insights in his
writings.
For
example, Frankl tells a story about a woman named Alice who works for a
cleaning service. She cleans the central
offices of a large corporation.
Alice
wears blue jeans and a Marlboro cigarette tee-shirt to work. The executive of this corporation – let’s
call him Millionaire Mike – wears a dark business suit with a white shirt and
gold cuff links.
Alice
vacuums carpets and cleans toilets.
Millionaire Mike directs his multi-million-dollar corporation.
Alice
works evenings. Millionaire Mike works
days and evenings to keep up with the pace of business and the social life that
this demands.
Alice
works to send her son to a state university.
Millionaire Mike works to make more money for people who are already
wealthy, like himself.
Alice
finds her work bearable and light, but Millionaire Mike finds his work
stressful and draining. Every evening
they pass each other in the hallway of the office building and they are
puzzled.
Alice
wonders, “Why does he look so preoccupied
when he makes so much money and lives so comfortably?” Millionaire Mike wonders, “Why is she always cheerful when she has to
do this demeaning work?”
Viktor
Frankl says that the difference between the two of them lies in their
goals. Alice, the cleaning woman has the
goal of educating her son, while Mike, the executive has no real goal beyond making
large profits.
Need and Greed
Frankl’s
story and his observations help us to appreciate God’s Word today.
In the
gospel parable, Jesus is not condemning us for working to meet our family’s
needs and to maintain a reasonable lifestyle.
But he is saying that greed is a problem.
Greed
means that we feel that we never have enough and we always want more. The challenge is to tell the difference
between need and greed.
When
are our needs satisfied and where do our needs stop and does greed begin? The Scripture readings offer two guiding
principles to prevent need from becoming greed.
1.
Look to Others
First,
we must look beyond ourselves to others.
The
rich man in the gospel is totally focused on himself. Notice that the words of his conversation are
all “me” words.
“What shall I do? I will tear down my barns and
build larger ones. All my grain
and my goods will go there. Then I
can relax and I will have security for the rest of my life.”
This
man thinks that satisfaction and happiness are found in himself and in material
security. He is very much like the
corporate executive in the story.
He
totally misses the higher value of living for someone else and sharing what we
have with others, as the cleaning woman is doing. Because he does not look beyond himself to
others, need has turned into greed.
2.
Look to God
A
second guiding principle to keep our need from becoming greed is to look beyond
this world to God.
In
today’s second reading, Saint Paul tells us “to
seek the things that are above. Set your
minds on things that are above.”
If we
look beyond this world, we will be in touch with God who satisfies us like
nothing else can. We will be in touch
with the One who can satisfy our deepest longings – for affirmation and love
and belonging.
We will
then live more and more for the Lord who is our final goal in life. As the gospel says, we will realize that “our life does not consist in an abundance
of possessions.”
Conclusion
So, Jesus
does not condemn some financial security or comforts or possessions.
But he
cautions us to 1) look beyond ourselves to others and 2) look beyond this world
to God. If we do this, we will probably
not get carried away and allow our need to turn into greed.
