Eighteenth Sunday  Gospel C

Someone in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me.” 

· The Book of Deuteronomy specified how a father’s inheritance should be divided up. The eldest son always got the larger portion. Maybe this son was asking for more of an equal division of the inheritance. That was not what Jesus was about.

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.” 

· Jesus makes a distinction between having possessions and being owned by them. The question is not that a person may be rich. Rather it is, does he see himself as a steward of God’s gifts or as a possessor of these for his own use?

·        He also tells him that one’s true value is not based on how much one possess, but on how one         lives his life.

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?’ 

· Notice the absorption of the man with himself. He uses “I” six times and “my” five times. His success is seen for his own use and not in relationship to anyone else.

· What is our idea towards our possessions? Do we sense an area of greed in us? We are never satisfied with what we have, we want more and more?

· Jesus teaches that material possessions will never fully satisfy us.  No matter how much we have, we will always want more. That is the situation of our fallen human nature.

· Reflect on other related teachings of Jesus:

“One does not live by bread alone " (Lk 4:4).

       "What does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but lose or forfeit themselves?"                              

       (:Lk 9:25)

      "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body,     

       what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing" (Lk 12:22-

              23).

             See the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Lk 16:19-31).

             "How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!" (Lk 18:24).

Thus will it be for all who store up treasure for themselves but are not rich in what matters to God.”

· What is the issue here? What does it mean to you to be “rich in what matters to God?”

· What is God saying to you in this passage?