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What is the good life? According to a common American conception, the “good life” is imagined as one of sufficient economic success to secure a timely and restful retirement. Stating it so simply already begins to make the idea sound frivolous. But when we think about it, this really is a driving narrative of our culture that shapes the way we conceive of our lives.
What makes for a good life? What makes for success? What is the goal we are driving at in life? Work hard, play occasionally, amass wealth and, finally, enjoy the fruits of our labors in “peace” and “freedom.” While I am sure that many retirees would object to the terms “peace” and “freedom” as descriptors of their experience, we must nevertheless acknowledge this myth of the “good life” as a powerful force within our culture. In a very real way and to a significant extent, we are trained in our society to imagine the goal of our lives as the ability to one day say to ourselves the words of the man in the parable today: “Now as for you, you have so many good things stored up for many years, rest, eat, drink, be merry!”
This should make us distinctly uncomfortable as Catholics and as Christians, because our Lord is unsparing in his diagnosis of this attitude in life: It is foolishness; it is vanity; it forgets about the inevitability of death and its seismic power to relativize all the prior values in life. Of what value will all our former wealth and pleasure and relaxation and luxury be to us in that moment when all is taken away from us, and, confronted with the judgment of eternity, we are found wanting?
As the parable of this Sunday’s Gospel concludes with Jesus saying: “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 belong?’ Thus will it be for all who store up treasure for themselves but are not rich in what matters to God” (Lk 12:20-21).
It is difficult to say what this parable should imply for our IRAs and our 401Ks, especially in a society that is to a large extent built around these structures for its sustenance and viability. I am not advocating rash decisions here. But, at the very least, these words of our Lord should make us uncomfortable, and spur us to examine our lives carefully. Living in the society that we do, we need to be especially wary of the temptation Jesus highlights in this Gospel, lest we end up confusing our goals with the goals of the world.
For as Christians, our goal is not rest, or retirement or ease. The only goal of life that makes sense for us, at the end of the day, is that of conforming ourselves to the crucified love of Jesus, which empties itself and stores up all its treasures in the love of the Father. That is the real “good life” that Jesus reveals to us. May we strive for it, even more energetically than we do for our “retirement.”
Father Evans is co-pastor of St. Mary in St. Paul’s Lowertown neighborhood. He also serves part time at the Center for Catholic Studies at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul. He can be reached at [email protected].
Sunday, July 31
Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
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