When the remnants of that horribly destructive Hurricane Helene blew through our area last September, you guys probably remember we had a boil-water notice for a couple of weeks.

It was a very small inconvenience to deal with, especially compared to the terrible devastation not very far to our southwest… but when the boil-water notice was first issued, I remember thinking to myself:

“Oh wow. I should probably go pick up a pack of water bottles or something at Wal-Mart.”

So, I casually hopped in the car, and moseyed on over to Wally World…

And I quickly realized this was a BIG MISTAKE.

The place was absolute CHAOS.

Wall-to-wall people.

Total insanity. Panic. Disarray. Everyone grabbing whatever they could get their hands on…

I quickly diverted over to Walgreens where I managed to buy one of the last remaining 24-packs of water bottles on the shelves…

It was all very stressful. And what I learned from this experience was how pathetically UNPREPARED I was in the face of even low-level natural disasters.

So, like everyone does in the year 2025…. I consulted YouTube.

Has anyone ever dipped their toes into the world of “prepping?”

Well, I did!

I started to learn a bit about what sorts of things it’s not such a bad idea to have on hand in the case of an emergency. Things I had NEVER thought of before. My eyes were opened! The veil of ignorance was rolled back! And you know what… the next time the electricity goes out, or we get snowed in for a day or two, or the End of the World starts to happen:

I’m sorta kinda ready.

I at least have some water bottles good to go…

But you know what?

All of my proper stuff is just dust in the wind. It’s pretty much nothing.

“Vanity of vanities! All is vanity!”

So says our first reading from the Book of Ecclesiastes! 

Interestingly enough, this is the ONE time out of the entire lectionary cycle that we get to hear from this fascinating and sort of strange book of the Bible on Sunday.

If you’ve ever tried to read it, you’ll know that the Book of Ecclesiastes paints a somewhat dark and dour picture of life. The author, through a persona who identifies himself as Qoheleth, says over and over again that regardless of what you are able to accomplish in life, no matter how well you do with your health, your finances, your material possessions…

It’s all just “vanity.”

The Hebrew word used here is the term ‘Hevel.’

“Hevel” means something like… vapor and smoke… Everything passes away, it’s all blown away in the end. Vanity of vanities… all things are vanity!

I’ve heard one scholar even translate it as: “Everything is bubbles.”

A bubble is very fragile. It can pop at any moment. It’s there one second, gone the next. It’s basically a nothing.

So, the divinely inspired author is saying that human life is a lot like a bubble. It’s fascinating, beautiful, graceful for a few moments, and then… POP.

That’s a little disturbing, right? And we might rightly ask… what in the world is going on here? This doesn’t sound very hopeful or encouraging… Why is THIS in the Bible?

Well — If I may suggest one way of approaching this text, it’s this:

The book of Ecclesiastes is a brutally honest book, and it’s a very valuable, insightful book. It tells us many true things. It’s true that wealth and health are fragile realities that we can’t take with us in the end. That we all in fact will die one day, and therefore, so many of our worldly efforts are actually kind of pointless in the grand scheme of things.

BUT… at the same time, we need to remember that the book of Ecclesiastes does NOT tell the whole story. 

The Bible is not just one book, written in a linear, straightforward fashion. It is actually a collection of books written at VERY different times by VERY different people. You can think of the books of the Bible as squares stitched together into a giant quilt: each square has its own interesting, beautiful, unique design.

The common thread, of course, is the Loving Providence of God — the Holy Spirit was inspiring each of the human authors to convey their narratives and stories according to various literary genres and styles for very particular purposes.

So we don’t look at just one square and think we have the whole quilt! The full quilt — the whole story — is the rest of Sacred Scripture.

And where does Sacred Scripture ultimately lead us to? 

Jesus.

Jesus is the interpretive lens for ALL Sacred Scripture. He puts even the sort of depressing and dark message of Ecclesiastes into proper perspective for us.

Because while it’s quite true that all the prepping in the world won’t save us… and everything in this world will in fact turn to dust and vapor in the end…

…We also confidently believe in a God who has already destroyed death on a Cross, and has definitively conquered the world by rising from the dead: 

“In this world, you will have troubles, but take heart: I have conquered the world,” Jesus says.

In Him, we’ve already “died” through the waters of baptism. We’ve already experienced the loss of EVERYTHING. So now we can “think of what is above, not of what is on earth” as St Paul says in our second reading from his letter to the Colossians. We can “put to death the parts of [us] that are earthly.” We can become RICH… not with worldly stuff that will pop one day like BUBBLES…

We can become rich in what actually matters to God.

That was the trouble with this guy Jesus tells us about in our gospel today. He was very well-prepared when it came to this world of dust… but he was terribly poor when it came to what mattered most:

His relationship with the Lord.

He says to himself, ‘Wow, I have done such a good job of prepping. I’m so well-prepared for anything and everything that comes my way. The only problem is, I’m running out of space to put all my stuff. What should I do?”

So he decides to tear down his old barns and build even bigger ones.

And once he’s finished with that, he says to himself “You did it! You’re ready for the future! You have so many good things stored up for many many years — Now you can relax, eat, drink, and be merry!”

Then, the bubble pops.

And God says to him, ‘You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?’

Guys, like it or not, the bubble is gonna pop.

A lot of people today are warning about economic collapse, the devaluation of the dollar, empty shelves, wars and rumors of wars, AI taking over large sectors of the workforce…

The only way we’ll actually be ready for any of what might becoming down the pipe is if we are close with the Lord.

And in order to do that, we need to sort of lose faith in the things of this world. We need to be ready to lose all of that stuff. 

The Catechism says that Detachment from riches is actually a prerequisite for entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven. 

If when we think about our bank accounts, our investments, or our pile of canned goods and batteries we have piled up in the basement… If when we think about all of that, we feel secure and safe…that we have what we need for a very long long time and therefore, we can take it easy… 

Then we are fools! 

All that stuff is like vapor. It’s like smoke, blowing away.

It’s all bubbles.

Does that mean that investing wisely and ethically for your retirement… or having a few extra water bottles on hand in case of an emergency is wrong? That you’re not trusting the Lord enough?

Not necessarily.

But we do need to remember that none of that will ever save us! — It’s all bubbles.

Only the life of Jesus will remain in the end.

We need His life in us if anything is going to last. “Our life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory.” We need the Sacraments. We need a consistent life of prayer. We need the Church. We need a strong devotion to Our Lady. We need the Saints. We need to be rich in the things that matter to God.

As long as we cling to those things, then we are the ultimate preppers — The eternal preppers! We’ll actually be ready for absolutely anything that comes our way.