Commentary for Sunday: 31st July

Luke 14, 25-33:

Sunday, 31st July 2022 (18th T O C)

Wealth, possessions, material goods… how much good they could do… but how much harm they often cause!

Because, in themselves – as we all know – “things” are not bad. But human beings tend to have the “little flaw” of allowing themselves to be taken over by them. And the more we have… the greater the possibility of this subjection. And when one lives like this, subjugated, everything becomes a worship of what one serves (“you cannot serve two masters…” says Jesus in another passage of the Gospel). And hence the normal consequence of wanting to preserve or expand these riches even at the expense of other realities that are more noble or beneficial.

That is why Jesus encourages you today to ask yourself whether, in the face of that wealth, you are being truly rich before God, which is what matters. What does it mean to be “rich before God”? That’s not difficult to understand. To be rich before God is to “have much” of what he likes. That is to say, rich in fraternity, in sharing, in solidarity, in works of mercy, in the search for justice, in the defence of truth, in the option for the most fragile, the weakest… in the love of the good. And you – and I – do we have a lot of that? If not, it is not bad for us to hear from Jesus a word that should, at the very least, make us feel a bit upset and help us to think again: “Fool”.

 

Juan Ramón Gómez Pascual

Are you truly rich before God?

 

Start typing and press Enter to search