03 August 2025

03 August 2025 - 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Transcript

Reading:  

Luke 12:13

Write:  

“Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me.”

Reflect:   

This sounds like a reasonable request. Doesn’t it?

No. In reality all of our readings this weekend tells us he’s wrong. I know this flies in the face of what we would consider… justice.

Our first reading says this: “For what profit comes to man from all the toil and anxiety of heart with which he has labored under the sun?… This also is vanity.”

St. Paul puts it this way: “Put to death, then, the parts of you that are earthly: immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and the greed that is idolatry.”

Apply:   

This all comes back to a simple question: where is your treasure? Now, it is not wrong to have “things”– but we need to have them for the right reasons. It is good to have a family. It is necessary to support that family. It is good to have friends. It is good to be able to give good things to your friends.

It comes down to this. Do we see what we have as gift from God? And if it is a gift from God, it is intended to be used for his benefit. God can benefit from stuff that we have and do? Of course! Remember Jesus said whoever gives a cup of cold water to one of these little ones will surely not lose his reward.

We live in what is – without a doubt – the most prosperous country that has ever existed in the world. Should we be embarrassed about that? I don’t think so. However we have responsibilities because of that. I am not arguing for any kind of socialist redistribution of the goods that we have in our lives. I am not arguing for a “sense of fairness.” 

No. What I am arguing for is a new understanding of our responsibility as the stewards of God’s gifts to us. Recently we had the Peter’s Pence collection – a collection that goes to support the charitable works of the Holy Father. Locally, we have the St. Vincent de Paul groups. And there are many other types of organizations that work toward supporting those less fortunate than ourselves. I support a group that helps women in crisis pregnancies – it is called Mater Filius. This is something that started in Mexico City and the first place it came to in the United States was here in Omaha. It has spread all over the country. (By the way, they can use all the financial support we can give them.)

Have you done enough? I have to ask myself the same question! And that’s not a fun thing to try to answer. I know there was a time early in my priesthood when I did not have a lot of spare money. This still is not a job that is meant to make a lot of money. If I thought I came into this vocation to become wealthy, boy did I make a mistake. Yet I am better off than a lot of people in our own country. I have all of you as my family!

Paul urges the Colossians to “[think] of what is above, not of what is on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory.”

Listen to the closing two lines from the Responsorial Psalm: “prosper the work of our hands for us! Prosper the work of our hands!” This should be our daily prayer – daily prayer! But not to prosper us for ourselves but so that we can help others come to Christ.

I remember hearing the story years ago about someone who was complaining that this very rich couple should be giving all their money to the poor. But because this couple was very rich, they were able to move among people who were very rich and get those people to help those less fortunate. If they were to give away all they had and to become “poor,” how would they bring along anybody who was in their “rich circle of friends?”

Yes, it is true that Jesus said it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. But that does not mean a rich man cannot do the work of the kingdom and still be rich. It is a question of what we do with the riches and how manage what we have.

Why do we have the advantages that we do? Have we “labored with wisdom and knowledge and skill,” as it says in our first reading? Or – and now I’m going to get very pointed – are we like some people in our own country such as Warren Buffett or Bill Gates or… fill in the blank – who would you choose to put in as a name as an example of how NOT to live? I put in these two names because I have heard of some of their philanthropic endeavors – and they are not very good.

“Fill us at daybreak with your kindness,
  that we may shout for joy and gladness all our days.
 And may the gracious care of the LORD our God be ours;
  prosper the work of our hands for us!
  Prosper the work of our hands!”

May we learn to shout for joy through what we do for others. Not out of pride, but out of thanks to God for what are able to do for Him.

Name something that is your own – something that you made for yourself or of yourself. Is it not all from God? Is not the very breath you take a gift from God? “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” As Jesus warns at the end of our gospel today, “Thus will it be for all who store up treasure for themselves but are not rich in what matters to God.”

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