By Archbishop Thomas Wenski - The Archdiocese of Miami
Homily by Archbishop Thomas Wenski at Mass with Archdiocese of Miami seminarians at St. Thomas the Apostle Parish on Saturday, August 2, 2025 for the opening of the Seminarian Convocation.
There’s a saying that I saw on a bumper sticker or a T-shirt that said simply: the one who dies with the most toys wins.
This seems to describe ethos behind what sociologists call “conspicuous consumption”. We accumulate things – and think that these things are indicative of our worth, our value as human beings.” But he who dies with most toys, still dies. “All is vanity” as the first reading tells us.
The question that the Scriptures place before us today is simply “What matters to you?” And are we rich in what matters to God?
I remember one time, when I was still a parish priest, I was asked to meet with a group of young people who had just returned from a mission trip to the Dominican Republic. I was to help them “unpack their experience”. These young people were pretty much upper middle-class kids, educated in Catholic schools, kids like you might find here in South Miami or Pinecrest. And telling me about their experienced almost every one of them said that they had never saw or experience poverty like they saw in this Dominican village. But then they said, “But everybody seemed so happy”. Now dire poverty is not a recipe for happiness; but by unpacking their experience, I helped them see that while poor, desperately poor, in material things, they were rich in relationships. The village was full of their cousins and relatives, there were aunts and uncles, godparents, brothers and sisters. Everybody knew everybody else. And then, I said to these young people, you are obviously well off in material things. You got phones, your computers, your cars, etc. But why are some people miserable, even with all these things? Because they were poor in relationships: many did not have siblings or even a second parent in the home, cousins might live thousands of miles away. And too often the relationships they had were only virtual ones – through a screen and not with a real person. Lots of toys but no friends. Vanity of vanities…
In the gospel reading, someone in the crowd yells out to Jesus: Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me. But Jesus, instead of dividing the inheritance between the two brothers, Jesus speaks of how the inheritance has divided the brothers. “Take care”, he tells him, “To guard against all greed, for though one may be rich, one’s life does not consist of possessions.” Again, in God’s eyes, it is not what you have that counts, it is who you are, it’s not the quantity of your things but the quality of your character that matters to God.
Now Jesus is not against worldly success or achievement; one’s commitment to success in business can be the living out of a vocation – and a path to holiness. Jesus had rich friends – and I think those preachers that try to make businesspeople in the pew feel guilty for their success are more influenced by Karl Marx than they are by St. Mark. There is nothing wrong in making a profit – in fact, when a firm makes a profit, it shows that it has used its resources correctly and that human needs have been satisfied.
But we must be careful to avoid the temptation to separate our faith from the ordinary affairs of life. We must understand that we realize ourselves as human beings not through self-assertion or self-seeking but through self-sacrifice and self-giving.
In Jesus’ parable, the rich man proved himself to be a fool. He talks to himself: “What shall I do with this bountiful harvest?” I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones.” He is rich in material things, but he is also poor in relationships. Lots of barns but no friends. He doesn’t share any of his goods with others, he doesn’t share any part of himself with others. Not even his conversation.
In the second reading, St. Paul gives us much food for thought. “Your life in hidden with Christ in God.” He tells us to put on the new self – in the image of the creator. God’s creativity moves out to others; he shares his riches with others. God gives himself away.
The inheritance Jesus gives us is not to divide brother from brother. That would make us rich fools. The inheritance that we have received is one that we are pledged to give away.
