18^th Sunday in Ordinary Time C.   August 5, 2007.  Our Lady of Grace 5:15, 7:30, 11:30. Ecclesiastes 1:2, 2: 21-23.  Colossians 3:1-5, 9-11.   Luke 12: 13-21.

Last Wednesday evening I went to the Twins game with Fr. Erich and our 6PM teen music group.  The game was to begin at 7:05.   As we walked toward the Metrodome the street was filled with police cars, fire trucks and ambulances.  The parking lot attendant asked if we had heard that the freeway bridge a few blocks away had just collapsed.  There were several helicopters hovering above us a short distance away.  We were warned during the game that most of the downtown bridges over the Mississippi river had been closed and that we were not to use the side streets in leaving the area.  After the game the radio told us that there had been plans to cancel the game, but then it was decided that it was better to keep 24,000 people penned up in the Metrodome rather than having us wandering the streets so close to the collapsed bridge.  There is little doubt that some of the people who had just crossed the bridge or who were on the bridge when it collapsed were on the way to the Twins game.  I have driven across that bridge hundreds of times myself.

Then Jesus told them a parable. “There was a rich man whose land produced a bountiful harvest.  He asked himself, ‘What shall I do, for I do not have space to store my harvest.  Then he said, ‘This is what I shall do:  I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones.  There I shall store all my grain and other goods and I shall say to myself, ‘now you have so many good things stored up for many years, rest, eat, drink, be merry!’  But God said to him, “You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you, and the things you have prepared, to whom will they then belong?”   Jesus then added, “It will be like this for all who store up treasure for themselves but are not rich in what matters to God.”

Last Wednesday evening when the bridge collapsed it did not matter how much money the people who were on the bridge had.  It did not matter what kind of car they were driving.  It did not matter what kind of house they were living in or what position they had in the company for which they were working.  The only thing that mattered at the moment that the bridge went down is that they were rich in what matters to God.   All the material things that we think are important can disappear in the confusion of a single moment.  The only things that endure forever are the things that matter to God.

What matters to God?  It is very important that we know - only what matters to God will endure through all the collapses and tragedies of life and last forever. In his First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul says “If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal. And if I …comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.  Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, (love) is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.”  (I Cor. 13)

God is love.  Love is what matters to God.  Love alone endures forever.   We are very proud as Minnesotans that so many of the victims who pulled themselves out of their cars, or out of a school bus or out of the water did not think of their own safety first, or their status or their stored up riches; they thought first of helping the trapped and the injured people who were all around them.  The events of last Wednesday remind us that we measure the goodness of a person, not by their wealth and possessions, but by their willingness to give of themselves, even to the point of laying down their lives in loving service of the people around them.  In God’s eyes love is the only measure of our goodness. Love alone is the treasure that endures forever.

And so I ask you:   When you kids go off to school or to play in the morning do you remember to give them a hug and a kiss? I suspect that many on the bridge wished that they had given their kids a bigger hug that morning.   When you leave your spouse for the day or return in the evening do you take the time to speak words of tenderness and love? I suspect that many on the bridge wished that they had treated their spouse with greater tenderness that morning.  Have you made efforts to be reconciled with family members, neighbors or fellow workers with whom you are not at peace?  I suspect that people on the bridge were thinking about the petty disagreements that matter little in comparison to the gift of being alive. Do we spend time consciously loving God in daily prayer, Sunday and daily Mass and in Eucharistic Adoration? I would suspect that some people prayed for the first time that day on the bridge.  Loving words and actions matter most to God.

“Vanity of vanities… all things are vanity,” our first reading says.  We work hard with wisdom, knowledge and skill and then we die and we leave our possessions to someone who has not worked for them. “For what profit comes to us from all the toil and anxiety of our heart with which we have worked so hard under the sun?” “That is the way that it is for those who are rich in their possessions but not rich in what matters to God.”

In light of the recent tragedy there has been much talk about taking better care of the infrastructure of our community, especially our bridges, roads and highways.  I have no doubt that this is something we must do.  The concern that Jesus addresses today is the infrastructure of our lives. Riches and possessions are too fragile a foundation for a stable life.  Are we kidding ourselves by not addressing the fact that we have not paid enough attention to love and what truly matters to God as the foundation of all that we are and hope to be?  Are we running the risk of building our society and our lives- and not only our bridges - on a faulty foundation?

 For the wisdom to choose what matters to God we give God thanks and praise.