Today's Gospel

Don't Fall for This Trap!

Hi, I'm Matthew Kelly and welcome. Today's gospel comes from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 12, verses 13 through 21. "One of the multitudes said to Jesus, "Teacher, bid my brother divide the inheritance with me." But he said to him, "Man, who made me a judge or divider over you?" And he said to them, "Take heed and beware of all covetousness. For a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions." And he told them a parable, saying the land of a rich man brought forth plentifully. And he thought to himself, "What shall I do? For I have nowhere to store my crops." And he said, "I will do this. I will pull down my barns and build larger ones. And there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, "Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry." But God said to him, "Fool, this very night your soul is required of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?" So is he who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God?"

Is there a word or phrase or an idea that jumps out at you here? Jesus is approached and you know some guy said, "Jesus, help me out here. You know, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me." And Jesus is clear. He's like, "Well, this isn't my role, this isn't my mission." And how easily we get sucked into things, right? But Jesus has these boundaries. And he's like, "Nope, that's not why I came. That's not what I'm here for. That's not why the Father sent me." Like we hear these things over and over through the gospels, and they are a very clear example of boundaries, of Jesus saying, "No." And again, I return to the idea how easily we get sucked into things, how easily we get pulled into things that have nothing to do with us or isn't part of what we're called to do, but it's so easy to get drawn into things. And today we see Jesus just setting another boundary and then turns around and begins to teach again immediately.

So what do we see? We see the contrast between him being asked to do something that is not his mission and him very quickly re-engaging back in his mission. And I think that's powerful. I think that's very inspiring. And then the teaching, you know I think it's two lines I draw attention to. Beware of all covetousness. You know, so we go back to the—we go back to the garden, right? We've talked about it in the past, the idea that Adam and Eve are in the garden, there's the tree, there's the fruit, and does the woman take the fruit from the tree? Yes. But before that, she looks at it. She looks at the fruit, and the scripture tells us, she looked at the fruit and she saw that it was pleasing to the eye and desirable for gaining wisdom. She looked at the fruit. We see and then we covet, okay? We see, and then we covet. And Jesus here is saying, beware of all covetousness. Beware of anything that you covet. And so by extension, he is saying, beware of what you look at. Because since the beginning, back there in the garden, human beings, we see, and then we covet. And so we cannot be aware of all covetousness without being aware of, okay, what are we casting our eyes upon? And that could be in many forms, right? But an enormous form is like, what is the content that we're consuming? And what are we casting our eyes upon through the content that we are consuming? So that line really jumped out at me today.

And then the other line that jumped out at me was right at the end. And yes, we're very familiar with the idea. Jesus teaches it in a number of places of lay up a treasure for yourself in heaven, not here on earth. And here in the Gospel of Luke, it's a little bit different. He says, God says to the person, "Well, you're a fool because this very night your soul is required of you." But then he goes on to say, "So is he who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God." It's a beautiful phrase, right? "Rich toward God." And that begs us to ask, "Are we being rich toward God? Are we being super abundantly generous with God?"And I think that when we think about that, we very often discover that we are not super abundantly generous with God. And very often, we're quite stingy with God because our selfishness takes us away from that abundant generosity with God. Our selfishness takes us away from being rich toward God. And so let that be our invitation today. Let's go out into the world and be rich toward God. Let's be super abundantly generous to God. Have a great day, and remember, Be Bold, Be Catholic.