You have stored up treasure for the last days.
How do we relate to our material resources? Do we tear down our barns and build bigger ones to lay up a surplus of grain designed to last for many years, as did the rich fool? Does our fiscal responsibility go beyond simple prudence and reveal a desire to control the future, a desire that is not realistic?
"Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry."
"But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’ (see Luke 12:13-21).
Prudence is one thing. The need to exercise such absolute control over our destinies that we become stingy and selfish is something else.
Behold, the wages you withheld from the workers
who harvested your fields are crying aloud;
and the cries of the harvesters
have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.
As a simple test, how much of the resources we allocate to ourselves do we typically put to actual use? How much of them, by contrast, end up corroded and moth-eaten, kept away from the needs of the world but also not even utilized by we ourselves? Our bank accounts may well be gaining interest for us to use for necessities and to enable us to give to others. But what of those toys and treasures that we stockpile for ourselves? What of the luxury and pleasure that we purchase and ultimately just box up and store without deriving any value? If we have many such boxes at may be a sign that we need to involve God more in the planning of our budgets.
In our use of riches the real risk is the way we become so self-focused that we neglect the needs of those around us. We who have been blessed with an abundance have been blessed not primarily for ourselves but so that we can bless in turn those who have less. Do we do this?
You have condemned;
you have murdered the righteous one;
he offers you no resistance.
Jesus himself was not born into a life of luxury, and trained his disciples to be ready to go forth on mission without bringing money bags with them. Jesus deeply empathized with the material poor, to the degree that he received good or ill done to them as done unto him. If we claim to love Jesus but fail to notice the poor on our own doorsteps our claims are at best inadequate and partial. When we do not do what God himself equipped us to do it is as good as condemning the poor to their plight. It is too easy for us to dismiss the poor, for there are so many of them that the problem seems intractable, and in most cases their stories are so different from our own that it is difficult for us to relate. Yet when we recognize the presence of the righteous one in his poor it can help us to see beyond our selfishness and teach us to be generous.
Anyone who gives you a cup of water to drink
because you belong to Christ,
amen, I say to you, will surely not lose his reward.
Even small acts of charity are valuable to Christ. Small acts as well as large ones mean that our focus is finally off of ourselves and on another. They help us escape from the prison of ego and allow us to begin to see the wider world around us through God's eyes.
We are called to be salt for the earth, salt that gives flavors and preserves lasting nourishment. The key to remaining salty is too avoid too much worldly contamination. Both actions that potentially scandalize others and sins committed in secret mix our salt with things which are inedible and potentially poisonous. We are called to be so invested in being people who live for the sake of others that we should, by hyperbolic example, desire this even more than the integrity of our own bodies.
If our hands grasp wealth, if our feet cause us to walk in evil ways, if our eyes look with lust or envy, and especially if we lead others to stumble by example, it is clear that we have lost our function as salt. What will restore its flavor? Jesus himself can do so. May he enable us to see his own presence in others and to reorient our lives at least a little more toward service, at least toward small, daily acts of love to which he invites us. Acts on a grand scale are often an illusion of pride. If we begin by being faithful and small things we can be sure that we will be usable by him for whatever he desires.
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