WHY DOES PAUL CALL GREED IDOLATRY?

Homily for Sept. 11^th, 2013: Col. 3:1-11; Luke 6:20-26.

          “Put to death the greed that is idolatry,” we heard in the first reading. Why does Paul identify greed with idolatry? To answer that question, we must ask another: what are greedy people hungry for? They hunger for one or more of four things: possessions, pleasure, power, honor. If only I could get enough of those things, the greedy person thinks, I’ll be happy. Experience teaches otherwise. The pursuit of any of those things leads not to happiness, but to frustration. Why? Because we’ll never get enough. “Whoever thinks that having a lot of money will make you happy,” a millionaire said, “has never had a lot of money.” 

Possessions, pleasure, power, honor are all good. They become bad only when we make pursuing them central in our lives. Then, whether we realize it or not, we are guilty of idolatry: worshiping a false god who cannot hear or answer our prayers. Only the God of Jesus can do that. No one has said it better than St. Augustine: “You have made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until we rest in you.”

That helps us understand Jesus' words in the gospel: “Blessed [which means happy] are you poor … woe to you who are rich.” This raises another problem: few of us here are poor. And even those who may be poor, by American standards, are still better off than millions in the developing world who will go to bed hungry tonight.

The rich upon whom Jesus pronounces woe are not only those with many possessions. Jesus’ words are a warning also to people of modest means who are fully content with their present, comfortable existence; who do not realize their need for God; and that what they do have is a gift from God for which they must thank him every day.

Moreover, even the materially rich can join those whom Jesus calls blessed or happy, provided that they share their goods with those in need, realizing that, like every human being, they stand before God saying in the spirit of the old evangelical saying: “Nothing in my hand I bring / Simply to your cross I cling.”