Luke 12: Eat, drink, and be merry?

Hilaire Belloc, the great early-20th-century English writer, Catholic apologist, friend of G.K. Chesterton, and all-around crank, once wrote a poem called "The Catholic Sun," which reads:

Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine,
There's always laughter and good red wine.
At least I've always found it so.
Benedicamus Domino!

The spirit of Belloc's poem seems at first to be at odds with Jesus' parable about the rich fool, who stores up earthly treasures and says to his soul, "Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry" (12:19), only to be upbraided by God: "Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?" (12:20).

But Jesus' parable cannot be a blanket condemnation of relaxation and earthly pleasures. After all, even God took a day off to rest after the six days of creation, and the Psalms say God made "wine to gladden the heart of man, oil to make his face shine and bread to strengthen man's heart" (Ps 104:15).

Rather, it is the rich man's spiritual complacency and delusion of self-sufficiency that are the problems -- he "lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God" (12:21), Jesus says. We must instead store up "a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys" (12:33).

And we must remember that our earthly possessions and pleasures, while not our salvation, are all gifts from God. Belloc's poem is truly Christian, for he concludes his paean to laughter and wine with a prayer of thanksgiving: "Benedicamus Domino!" -- "Let us bless the Lord!"

(Image: Mr. Hilaire Belloc, The World's Work, Vol. II, June to November 1903)