Gospel: 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 the one who stores up treasure
for himself but is not rich in what matters to God.”
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Reflection:
What is material
wealth that many of us are not able to let go of it? Many of us are even
willing to sacrifice family relationship just to have possession of this
temporal wealth. Many of us are even
willing to work even to the detriment of our health just to have it.
We are
even willing to sacrifice our good name and reputation to have wealth even
dirty or corrupted wealth. Our greed for material wealth if not checked could
be our ticket to the kingdom of the evil one.
Who among
us are willing to go to hell in exchange for earthy wealth? None of us of course!
Yet we keep on punishing ourselves to have it not knowing that this greed for
wealth will only give us tons of problems and miseries.
Wealth
per se is not evil it becomes evil once we allow ourselves to be controlled and
manipulated by it. What should we do therefore? We must not allow wealth to
control and manipulate us. We should not allow our greed for wealth to dictate
upon us. And this we can only do if we have Jesus in our lives. – Marino J.
Dasmarinas
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