Reflection for the 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time: 4 August 2013

(Ecc 1: 2, 2: 21-23; Col 3: 1-5, 9-11; Lk 12: 13-21).

All three readings of today’s liturgy make reference to material possessions. We live in a world where the wise management of finances, property and possessions is necessary and even praiseworthy, and yet there is a fine line between earning enough and being rich. Then we have the situation beyond the wealth that flows from a good head for business, to the vast wealth accumulated by the few. This we associate with greed.

A wrong attitude to material things can have disastrous consequences. In Luke's Gospel for today, the question from ‘a man in the crowd’ reminds us that disputes about inheritances can ruin families. How many examples do we have in our own day, when following the stress of the passing away of a beloved parent, friend or relative, there comes the dispute over dividing the inheritance?

There is no condemnation in today's Gospel that the farmer was a rich man. The reason why Jesus in the parable calls him a 'fool' is because he didn't know what to do with his wealth; he saw that the only purpose of acquiring it was to acquire more. It seems he never thought that his bounty could be shared in some way with the poor, whose labour had no doubt helped to fill his barns.

Perhaps in today's parable, Jesus reminds Israel of one of its historical sins - that of forgetting. In the books of the Torah - the Old Testament - Yahweh continually reminds the people that it was their God who brought them out of the land of Egypt, and that everything they now had, had been granted them from the hand of Yahweh. Yet in times of prosperity, when the granaries were full and the cattle were fat, Israel saw that it was they who had done this by their own hands. They forgot the Covenant and the Decalogue, and Yahweh's injunction to take care of the widow, the orphan and the stranger, and to share the produce of the land with the needy and the poor. Through the parable of the Rich Fool, Jesus reminds us that everything we own is a gift, and that it is to be shared.

Many strangers have come to our shores in the past, and many more are coming today. They are not asking us to fill their pockets for them, they are simply asking us to grant them a little of what we have, and to give them a chance to work for a better life. This land has an abundance of resources, not the least of which is freedom and opportunity. We can share these without diminishing our own prosperity. Let us not forget that we are only stewards of this land, for a time and a season.