“Property has its duties as well as its rights.”

One day Mother Teresa was tending to the wounds of a leper. A nasty, utterly disgusting job. Someone said to her, "I wouldn't do that for a million dollars." To which Mother Teresa replied, "Neither would I."

(Gospel Text: LK 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 the one who stores up treasure for himself
but is not rich in what matters to God."

There’s a difference between being greedy and being rich. 

According to the Oxford Dictionary, greed is defined as the intense and selfish desire for something.  Some rich people can be greedy, but some people can have a lot of money and choose not to spend it on all their personal needs (they provide for their children, they have children and are open to life, they give some money to their church, or give some to a charity).  In other words, it seems to me that Jesus is okay with us having a lot of money, as long as we use our money wisely.  If we use our money to provide for our families and give to the poor, we’re using our money wisely.  What he doesn’t want us to do is to get sucked into our consumer society, which can be a big influence in everyday life. 

Our consumer society tells us that we’re not cool if we don’t have the newest item or make this amount of money.  What the consumer society doesn’t tell us is that we often cannot live without the blessings of God in our life that we all have, no matter how rich or how poor we are.  We often forget that people, like our family and our friends, and the feeling we get after helping those who suffer are the greatest rewards and the greatest “things” you can have in life.  We can’t experience those great things in life if we spend all of our time at the office and constantly worry about earthly possessions.  We often times don’t know what we have until it is gone, so we must take the time to enjoy these God-given blessings. 

In today’s gospel, Jesus warns us that our life could end at any given time and we could stand in front of Jesus tomorrow with our fate before us. We must wonder, have we taken the time to enjoy what’s most important in life or have we been too worried about material possessions?

God plans as does a mother cooking the family meal, making enough for everybody. All the family has to do is share. If the first one to get the bowl takes too much, the last one goes without. Since we pray: "Give us today our daily bread," let's act accordingly (Mt 6:11).

Grow "rich in the sight of God."