Many years ago when I was a newly ordained Anglican priest and inexperienced, an elderly parishioner called Lil Higgins shared with me some good practical Cheshire wisdom on how to live the Christian life in the face of death.  Her comment was short and to the point: “Father, there are no pockets in a shroud”.  There was a time in England when more people than now lived their lives fully and joyously in Christ, but always preparing for that fuller and more joyous life in eternity with and in Him. Such an estimation of life based on practical love rather than greed is the sort of simple asceticism that every Christian could and should practice. 

[Fr. Deacon Emmanuel recounts the gospel with the children]

…. So the rich farmer in today’s gospel was a fool.  His produce was bountiful and overflowing so he decided to rebuild his barns on a much bigger scale so as to store all his grain and many possessions.  Just like a millionaire lottery winner who is careless with his money and intent on spending it, so the rich man squandered his life in shallow and fleeting pleasures.  It is his hedonism speaking when he says to his soul: “Take your ease, eat, drink, (and) be merry”.  In the parable as told by Jesus, there is perhaps a quotation from Isaiah 22:13: “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die”.  Notice that the rich man leaves out the words: “for tomorrow we shall die”.  In mindlessly amassing all his wealth and spending it on himself he was in fact trying to blot out eternity and God from his life.  If he was mindful of death, he suppressed it by leaving out that little phrase: “for tomorrow we shall die”.  He that believed that by hoarding his vast wealth he might somehow banish death from his mind.  He was like those ancient pharaohs who were entombed in the pyramids with all their precious possessions as if gold itself could travel beyond the grave.  I must invoke here once more dear Lil Higgins: “there are no pockets in a shroud”.

The greed of the rich man, which is the source both of his delusion and the corruption of his soul, has other even more deadly consequences.  He not only sinned against God and himself but also against his fellows.  His destructive passions created economic injustice.  His corrupting acquisitiveness deprived the poor of their due.  The great St Basil, in commenting on this parable, proposed a yet more radical teaching.  He said: “for if everyone receiving what is sufficient for his own necessity would leave what remains to the needy, there would be neither rich nor poor”. 

This may seem to some of us a most impractical and unrealistic teaching.  However, when the Lord said: “for you will always have the poor with you” he also added after that: “and you can do good for them whenever you want, but you will not always have me”. We, therefore, learn to put Christ first because in so doing we shall never neglect the poor.  We have no excuse.  If we want to save our own souls, we must live justly; that is, we must give from our surplus to those in need, mindful that the generosity of love builds for us a heavenly habitation.  This is what St Ambrose of Milan, a western Orthodox saint, said concerning this matter: “for in vain he amasses wealth who knows not how to use it.  Neither are these things ours which we cannot take away with us.  Virtue alone is the companion of the dead, mercy alone follows us, which gains for the dead an everlasting habitation”.

All this is very well but I have not explained how we can protect ourselves and the poor, who are our brothers and sisters, from those tendencies within ourselves toward greed and the denial of both death and judgement.  This is where asceticism comes in.  Asceticism is the denial of oneself for the sake of God and for others.  Through fasting and almsgiving we discipline our appetites and desires in order to give birth to a graceful generosity to the poor and disadvantaged, whom we know from the gospels to be so dear to Christ’s heart.  Denial of one’s self is the key which unlocks not only the door of Paradise but also a corresponding door on earth to new life and opportunity for those crushed by human greed and economic exploitation.  This redistribution of wealth cannot be achieved without the conversion of the human heart.  Political ideologies alone always fail to deliver.  It is the heart that must come to know the love of God so that it can make of earth an Eden once more.

There are some saints of the church who have prophetically lived out these truths by their own sacrificial lives, exhibiting sometimes extremes of behaviour that seem folly to decent sensible folks One such was St Maximos Kavsokalyvites, a fourteenth century Greek saint and fool for Christ.  As a monk on the Holy Mountain of Athos, he had the unnerving habit not only of moving erratically from place to place, which was and is not unusual on the Holy Mountain, but also of burning down each new hut that he had built upon settling down briefly in a new place.  In this way he proved the truth of that verse in Hebrews (13:14) which states: “for here we do not have a lasting city, but we are seeking the city which is to come”.  St Maximos, therefore, has a Christian answer for the rich man in today’s parable: “empty your barns to the poor and then burn them down, burn them down right now!” 

Such extremes of commitment may fall within our own calling but the practical implications of the gospel are the just the same.  Riches in heaven endure. Riches on earth are all subject to corruption and decay.  If we want to avoid spiritual death, then we must embrace a life of self-denial, compassion and generosity.  These only come through prayer, fasting and the giving of alms.  So let us burn down our barns and let the poor in!