Someone in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me.”
He replied to him, “Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?”
Then he said to the crowd, “Take care to guard against all greed, for though one may be rich, one’s life does not consist of possessions.”
Then he told them a parable.
“There was a rich man whose land produced a bountiful harvest.
He asked himself, ‘What shall I do, for I do not have space to store my harvest?’
And he said, ‘This is what I shall do: I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones. There I shall store all my grain and other goods and I shall say to myself, “Now as for you, you have so many good things stored up for many years, rest, eat, drink, be merry!”’
But God said to him, ‘You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?’
Thus will it be for all who store up treasure for themselves but are not rich in what matters to God.”
REFLECTION
‘You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?’
The things that we build, to whom do they belong?
In our culture, at least for my generation, we were taught to study and work hard, search for the right spouse, settle, create a family, grow old together, build a legacy, etc. We humans have been doing that for thousands of years. As young people we wanted to change the world, as we grew older and had children, we passed our faith and values to them hoping they can continue trying to create a better world.
This past summer our family did one of those bucket list trips that are done only once in a lifetime. In it we met lots of people from different backgrounds. Some closer to my age, some younger ones. Most of the ones from my generation, us, born in the 1900's, were doing this adventure because of health scares that made us realized there is never a good time to do what one wants to do. That the golden years might not be that golden. The young couples in their twenties were travelling because they wanted to enjoy life and see the world. Many of them had together or married between 5 and 7 years. Had no children, and were trying to either build wealth or see the world. Children were not something they were considering welcoming anytime soon, or ever.
At first we did not think much of it, I thought their way of thinking was just an outlier behavior, however on our last stop in California, we realized this is actually the norm. Most young people we met that were in a relationship had no children, and were not planning on having them. As we walked the streets we saw no local children. Only the tourists'. We did see lots of dogs. People alone or in couples walking them, and even pushing them in strollers on the street, and even bringing them into restaurants, and sitting and feeding them at the tables. Made me think that the phrase from Chesterton: "Wherever there is animal worship there is human sacrifice" is a frank reality. (We adore our pets, and legalized abortion, but that is a discussion for another day).
So today, as a society, we are either working to amass wealth which we may or not get to enjoy. And/or we are fixated on whatever our electronic devices are feeding us. For many of us the last thing we see at night is a blue screen as well as the first thing when we wake up. We are infatuated with the feeds from our social media apps to the point where many people suffer from anxiety because of how their popularity is reflected on them. As human we still yearn for companionship, so pets are a partial way of filling the vacuum created by physical and electronic isolation.
But then, I should talk. I've been in cyberspace since the 1980s. My work revolves around electrons displayed in a monitor. If we ever loose power everything I have ever build will be gone right there.
We don't live in the world I grew up into. That is for sure. So to get out of myself, from the narcissistic mirror that is social media, and the comfort of my own surroundings (couch, Netflix, fridge, pets), I have to be extremely intentional. I do have to work for a living, that is for sure, but then I have to be grateful to God for all His gifts to me and my family. Everything has to be put in a schedule, including attending Mass, time for praying, time to volunteer, time to talk and play with my family, meet with friends, even when the dogs have to be walked and exercised. It is harder to be spontaneous when we don't live in a closed knit community and family, friends, work, school, and church are many miles away from where we live.
I love the wisdom of the Church which brings us this reading to remind us we have to build, what we have to strive for if we want eternal salvation: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and decay destroy, and thieves break in and steal. But store up treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor decay destroys, nor thieves break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be." (Mt 6:19-21).
If we want to build that treasure in Heaven, but don't know how to start, we can begin by consecrating ourselves to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, so He can help us and guide us in the direction that points towards Him.
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