The readings this weekend warn how useless material wealth will be when we die. St. Paul reminds us that we have already died with Christ in baptism and risen to new life. To live this new life, we must put to death whatever tendencies keep us from Christ.

Wealth can be a gift from God. The abuse is not necessarily in the possession of wealth. More likely, we abuse wealth either in the ways we attain it or use it—or both. How do we abuse the attainment of wealth? I can give an obvious answer, such as robbing a bank, but this makes it too easy to justify myself. Do I work a full day for my pay, or do I spend a lot of time visiting with other employees, surfing the Web, taking extra-long breaks, or texting my friends? Am I honest with my customers, charging only for work I have done?

As for using our wealth, we usually think of family first. Do we spoil our kids, so they can “have the things I couldn’t afford when I was young”? Or do we teach them to work for what they get? Do we also think of the poor and homeless? Do we teach our children to be generous to others?

Notice that Paul does not mention wealth. Instead, he goes deeper, pointing out the thoughts and desires that lead to a life centered in wealth. In baptism, we put to death passion and greed, tendencies that push us to own more or to control another person. Paul uses the image of taking off these vices as if they were clothing and putting on a new self that shows Christ in us. When we have been renewed that way, then Christ becomes visible in all people. We no longer have reason to look down on anyone for being poor or sickly or of another race. We begin to see Christ in them, for as Paul says, “Christ is all and in all” (Colossians 3:11).                               -Tom Schmidt, Diocesan Publications

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August 4th – SAINT JOHN MARY VIANNEY (1786-1859)

A busy pastor jokingly suggests the secret of John Vianney’s holiness: “He died seventeen years before telephones!” Call they didn’t, but visit they did, keeping Vianney eighteen hours a day in the confessional. Stories abound of reading hearts and exorcisms, but Vianney’s first miracle was getting ordained. Difficulty with studies delayed him, prompting the rector’s apology to the bishop, “So far to ordain just one, especially this one!” The bishop, who could not know he was ordaining the future patron saint of parish priests, replied, “No burden to ordain one good priest!” In Ars, only an elderly handful attended Mass, “praying,” one told Vianney, “for a priest with brains.” But he stayed forty-two years, fulfilling the promise he made the day he arrived. In a sculpture just outside the village Vianney points skyward: “Show me the way to Ars,” he tells a boy, “and I’ll show you the way to heaven.” To someone who feared there was no heaven beyond the grave, Vianney smiled, “My child, it would have been heaven enough to have lived as Jesus’ disciple on earth.”

—Peter Scagnelli, Diocesan Publications

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OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS- August 5th

The feast day of Our Lady of the Snows is also the day of the dedication of the Basilica of Saint Mary Major in Rome, which was first built to honor Mary after a miraculous August snowfall on that spot. The famous icon of the Virgin Mary that can be seen there—Salus Populi Romani (the salvation of the Roman people)—is said to have been painted by Saint Luke. It is perhaps the best loved and most honored Marian icon in Rome.