Gospel of Luke 12:13-21

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.”

Luke 12:13-21

Gospel Reflection: 

This week’s Gospel is another difficult teaching regarding worldly things!  I sometimes think that it would be really nice to spend all day every day praying, reading Scripture, studying theology, and then praying more. 

However, I have a family, so I need to spend much of my time working, mowing grass, and completing other chores.  While tasks like these can be enjoyable, they are also mandatory when caring for a family.  Priests also have to do these sorts of things. They really are part of living out a vocation! The problem that we can run into is when we let them dominate our lives and we become too focused on them.  Something like earning money for the family can become the top priority that all other tasks become secondary to. We can find ourselves working so hard and focusing so much on other tasks that prayer becomes a sort of “nice hobby” that we participate in on weekends. 

This week’s Gospel teaches us yet again that everything is to be secondary to our relationship with God. We should be constantly aware that everything we do is in service of us getting to Heaven. The classical practice of asceticism is in part to remember that we are travelers on our way to Heaven and that our time on Earth is a passing trip.  If we lose sight of our destination, we find ourselves in real trouble. This week, consider reflecting on your priorities and daily practices to better place God at the center of your daily life.

This reflection was originally published HERE.

Photo by Francesco Alberti on Unsplash