Monday of Week 29 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Luke 12:13-21

We move on now in Luke to more immediate concerns of the Christian life. Today’s topic is about the perennial question of money, or rather, the love of money. A man in the crowd said to Jesus:

Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.

According to Mosaic Law, the general rule was that an elder son received double that of a younger son. If there was a dispute, it was usually settled by a rabbi, which is presumably why the man approached Jesus. It was the kind of problem in which Jesus was not remotely interested, and he refused to get involved. One wonders how interested Jesus is when we make novenas to win lotteries or when we ask God to help us get our hands on the wealth of a rich and elderly aunt!!

Jesus now takes the opportunity to make some general remarks “against all kinds of greed”. A man may be wealthy, he says, but his possessions do not guarantee him life. Life comes with freedom, peace and happiness. Money cannot buy these things.

There is no evidence that rich people enjoy more freedom, peace or happiness, although many of us are inclined to think they do and envy them. Their marriages do not last any longer. They do not bring up better children. They do not necessarily enjoy better health.

At this point Jesus speaks a telling parable. A farmer who is already rich has a bumper harvest. It is so big that he has to pull down his existing barns to build larger ones. When all that is done, he smugly says to himself: “My boy, you have blessings in reserve for years to come. Relax! Put your feet up. Eat heartily, drink well. Enjoy yourself.” But Jesus tells them, that very night:

God said to him [i.e. the farmer], ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you’.

What happens now to all his piled-up wealth? Yes, it is all left behind. “You can’t take it with you.” “How much did he leave?” was asked about a billionaire who died. “Every cent,” was the reply. When the farmer met his God, what had he brought with him? Little or nothing. When St Teresa of Calcutta (Mother Teresa) died, how much do you think she brought? One feels she brought a great deal. And she certainly left behind a great deal to enrich the lives of many.

What is my attitude to money and wealth? If I were to die now, what could I bring with me to present to God? And what will I leave behind, apart from cash and possessions? All of us can be rich in God’s sight, and it does not require any money. Someone has said that the really rich are not those who have the most, but those whose needs are the least (see Luke 12:22-34, where Jesus spells out a recipe for a life free from anxiety—the life which he himself lived).

And what we need most is the ability to reach out in love, the love that builds and makes life better for others. Think of what good parents leave behind in children whose lives are dedicated to making this world a better place—or teachers who have helped young people to devote themselves to service of the community. What we need is to live in communities where people look after each other. That would be a situation where, because everyone gives, everyone gets.

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Monday of Week 29 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on Ephesians 2:1-10

We now enter the second chapter of the Letter in which Paul speaks of how the Gentiles together with the Jews have been called to share the gift of God’s love, showered on them with total generosity and not because of any merit on their part. Here Paul speaks about what God has done through Christ for both Jews (of which he himself is a representative) and Gentiles (who form the majority of his readers).

He begins by addressing the Gentiles (“you”), who in the past lived lives both morally and spiritually far from God:

You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world…

This is a description of their past moral and spiritual condition, separated from the life of God. They were under the influence of the “ruler of the power of the air”. The air was believed to be the dwelling place of Satan and all the demons, and this implies they belonged to a higher world than this earth.

But he says, “all of us”, meaning Paul and all his fellow-Jews were not without fault either. They too lived “doing the will of flesh and senses”, ruled only by their own physical desires and their own ways of thinking. The Jews were as worthy of God’s punishment as the rest of the world. (One has only to read the prophets to see how severely they condemned the behaviour of their own people.)

However, “we” (now indicating all, both Jews and Gentiles), though dead through our sin, have experienced God’s mercy and compassion and are overwhelmed by the outpouring of God’s love:

…when we were dead through our trespasses, [God] made us alive together with Christ…and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus…

Paul expresses this truth more fully in his Letter to the Romans (see Rom 6:1-10).

Notice the past tense of “seated us with him”. Already in Christ we are enjoying the life that will never end and for which the death of the body is a mere transition. Treating the eschatological reality as already existing is a characteristic of Paul’s letters written from prison. This way of thinking is also to be found in John’s Gospel.

In the final paragraph, Paul emphasises how what God has done for us in Christ Jesus is a sign of the immense and forgiving love of God which is given to people everywhere as purely free gift. It is in no way earned by what we do:

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God…

The saving is the gift of God; the faith is the trusting surrender of openness to that love. Our standing with God is:

…not the result of works, so that no one may boast.

Access to this love comes through faith, the unconditional surrender in trust of our whole selves to our loving God. It is not by any meritorious acts of our own, as believed by those who base salvation on the meticulous observance of a law or a moral code—as if such observance bound God to hand out rewards for good behaviour.

On the contrary:

…we are what he has made us…

Everything that we have become, every good and beautiful thing we do is simply God at work in us and through us. We are:

…created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we may walk in them.

But our doing so depends entirely on our openness to his guidance and help.

Let us then today say our unconditional ‘Yes’ to Jesus in faith. Only in this way can the deepest longings of our hearts be realised.

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