The modern-day rich fool. David Edwards was 46 years old, unemployed and living with his parents in 2001 when he won the lottery. David took the lump sum payout receiving $27 million after taxes. In the first year, he spent $12 million buying cars, 200 collectible swords, other stuff and big homes to store all the stuff in. David became a heavy drug user, who became so sick from addiction that he moved into Hospice care in Kentucky, where he died penniless.
When rich fools, like David, let their possessions suck up all their time, energy and money, the reality is that they end up missing out on life. Hearing stories like that of David helps remind us that the Parable of the Rich Fool was not just a cautionary tale about greed that Jesus told people 2,000 years ago. No, the lie that “This is my life, my money and my stuff and I will do whatever I want with it” is a lie the secular world tries to tempt us into believing every day. If this my life, my money, my stuff mindset is a lie, then what is the truth?
We discover the truth in hearing what God says to the rich fool who is trying to keep everything for himself. God says to him, “You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you.” “Demanded of you.” The original Greek word for this is a financial term that we would use if we let someone borrow money and we called the loan due in full or told them they need to pay back all the money now. We demand it back. God is not using this financial term in referring to the man’s money or stuff. God is using the term in referring to this man’s very life.
God is essentially saying to the man, and in the end to each of us, “I gave you your life as a loan and now I demand your life back.” God is giving us a wake up call to remind us that all we have is God’s life, God’s money, God’s stuff and we should use it as God desires. God gave each of us our lives here on this earth; our lives, which began with us being naked and having nothing. When we were babies, God provided us with someone to feed, bath and dress us. Everything we have in our lives today, God has blessed us with. We owe everything to God.
In the end, God who gave us our life can call our life back to him at any time and any money and possessions we may try holding onto will be left behind. When we realize this, we come to see that a rich person without God is just a poor person who temporarily has some money.
This relationship we have with God is key to us realizing that our lives will only be rich to the extent that they mirror God’s own generosity. God has given us life most generously and in an even greater way restored it. We realize our true net worth when we allow Jesus to gaze into our eyes and lovingly say, “You are worth everything to me.”
Jesus paid the ultimate price for all of our sins on the cross, so that we may have life and have it more abundantly. We experience this abundant life when we realize that what we have is God’s life, God’s money and God’s stuff to be used for his purposes.
So what does it look like in our modern times to live our lives in a way that is rich toward God? Let us look to Fr. John Riccardo from the Archdiocese of Detroit. When Fr. Riccardo spoke about what his life was like before becoming a priest, he said it was full of frustration because he grew up with a ton of money and money didn’t make him happy. He said, he looked like he had everything but he felt like he had nothing.
At the age of 21, he came to understand what living for the Lord meant in a very personal way. He had just finished essentially telling his Dad, “I am really grateful for the $100,000 you just shelled out for my education at the University of Michigan, but I am going to work in a co-op and bake bread for a while.”
After that conversation with his Dad, he was driving home listening to a Christian song in his car and a song lyric brought him to tears. Fr. Riccardo tells the rest of the story as follows: “I felt like my heart began to break. And as I’m crying, I’m on M-14 on my way to Ann Arbor underneath the Gotfredson Road exit, exit 15, I’ll never forget this. And I have a vision of the Lord right here in the car next to me and it was obviously him. As I look at him and he’s just kind of staring at me. And at a certain point, he’s sitting in the passenger seat, he just sticks his hand into my chest and he says, “John, these are all your dreams, all your goals, all your desires and everything you want to do with your life” (and he throws out the window). And I said, ‘That’s my life Lord.” He says, ‘I’m going to give you my dream, my goal, my desire and what I want you to do with your life.’ And he was gone. …”
Fr. Riccardo continues saying, “Then about four years later … Like I can hear this heater in our church right now, I heard a voice say, ‘John, I am inviting you to live single and to do it as a priest.’ And I went, ‘you’ve got to be kidding, I don’t know anything about priesthood and I don’t want to be single. You know, I want to be married. I want a wife, I want to have kids. … Lord, if that’s really you, you’ve got to give me desire, because that’s not what I want.’ … That took two days … I knew the day I woke up the reason why I am alive. … Even though these were years apart, this was one event that was stretched out over time.”
John continues saying, “I went to seminary in Rome … Right before I left for Rome, the last thing I had to do was get a physical. … The doctor is looking at my heart, because my Dad has had some heart problems. … We go and do some tests on my heart. … The doctor looks at the records and says to me, ‘Did you ever have a childhood illness that like threatened your life … because you have scar tissue on your heart and I can’t figure out where it would have come from?’ … ‘So, I’m in the chapel in Rome praying about all these things and I felt like the Lord just said, ‘you know you might have had an illness when you were a child, but the scar tissue on your heart is my hand, and I own you.’”
The question for each of us is, “Is there evidence our hearts and our lives have been changed because of our relationship with God?” God wants the movement of our own hearts to be toward him and for the way we spend our time and money to follow this movement of our hearts. Deep down each of us desires to give ourselves over totally to God because this is what we were made for. There is an incredible beauty in seeing people do what they were intended to do. It is inspirational to see. When ordinary people like you and me surrender our lives to him, our lives mirror his own divine nature here on earth.
This is where true human empowerment is found, in valuing so much the lives, money and stuff we have received as gifts from God that we preserve them for the one who has proven himself worthy, Jesus. Each time we receive Jesus in the Eucharist, he reassures us that his commitment to us has not changed.
The sooner we embrace the belief that what we have is God’s life, God’s money and God’s stuff and use them for his purposes, the sooner we all profit from the countless ways in which this approach enriches us and the world.
At the end of our lives on earth, when God demands each of our lives back, will the person God encounters be a rich fool or a person who is rich toward God?