"Give Control to God" - 18th Sunday homily

a movie from almost 10 years ago called The Mule, starring Clint Eastwood and Bradley Cooper and other stars about an elderly man who realized at the end of his long life that

he had chosen his work ahead of his family for so many years.

It was a bitter pill to swallow, like listening to the first reading about vanity.

and the Gospel, storing up treasure for yourselves, all those years of labor that was really just for Him.

And so he's similar to this rich man in the Gospel.

But at least he had, the Clint Eastwood character had people around him encouraging him to choose them, to put them first, know, namely his family.

There's no one around this rich man.

There's no mention of family, friends, heirs.

and he's called a by God.

And so the Eastwood character realized he had been a fool for so long.

In the Bible, fool is described in Psalm 14 as one who says in his heart there is no God.

And so the fool with his possessions and wealth takes the place of God.

St.

Paul calls greed idolatry.

false god.

I think the big danger with greed is taking control.

That is super dangerous.

Stuff in your relationship with God, with other people, with family.

The whole preface to this parable is a family squabble over inheritance.

Those of us who have been through that, it is ugly.

and people trying to control not just money but outcomes.

Whatever the situation with people who are control freaks or just obsessive or controlling life themselves, they can be impossible.

That's why it's so dangerous, but especially with possessions and wealth, like building ourselves up, I did this myself.

I control this myself.

And the frustration in that, this is why it's against God, the ways of God are not frustrating or limiting to freedom or to happiness, greed is.

The thing is, we're always chasing control, and we never get there.

I've lived in the world, I know, it's like, I just want to get to this point, and then I'll be happy.

If I only just get that happened, oh, then we're good.

And we either never get there, or when we get there, we're looking at the next point.

The next place.

The rich man does the same thing.

He's like, when I get things stored, then I can relax.

Then I can enjoy it.

But God calls him a fool saying, you're not even going make it through this night.

That's how little control he and we have over our lives.

We don't even know what's coming the next day.

What matters to God is we hand over control to Him.

And when we do that, that's when we have security.

He's in charge, He has a good track record, He'll take care of it.

That's when we find contentment and security and peace.

Something we've been chasing all along doing ourselves, or trying to do it ourselves.

We don't do it perfectly.

And we give them control, then we kind of want to take it back.

There have been nights recently with all the work going on in the parish and all the projects and it's beautiful and it's awesome because of your generosity.

Get to that in a second.

I'm there in adoration to the few feet from the Lord in the Eucharist and I'm going over the numbers and kind of going through the details saying, Jesus, I know you're going to

take us to the bottom line.

You're in charge.

I gave you control.

But how are we going to get there?

And just go on over repeatedly, repeatedly, like, can you stop sweating the details?

You gave me control, let me have it.

Don't try and take it back.

And I put down my phone or the figures and you're right.

We don't do it perfectly, but we should hand them over control of our budget, of our possessions, of our wealth.

Do it the right way and we receive that immediate contentment.

He's got this.

It's going to be good.

This is what matters to him.

He wants control.

We hand him control.

Now we know what's coming from his budgetary approach to give generously to what matters to him in terms of the Church and the poor and all these good things.

And again, that's as running this parish and pleading to you for that, so many of you responded so generously, so regularly, so beautifully, that as a result,

you and OLVP are rich in what matters to God.