XVIII SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
MAN DOES NOT LIVE BY BREAD ALONE
By our Pastor, Fr. Carmelo Jimenez
This Sunday the readings really question our way of life. We can disguise our lives with words, but they are fallacies of language. But what we are and what we feel, that we cannot hide from God.
Luke insists that for Jesus, riches and abundance of goods do not provide life to man. I love a reflection circulating on the Internet, named the interview of God by a journalist:
“—Come in. God said. So, you would like to interview Me?
—If you have the time, I said.
—God smiled and said: My time is eternity and is enough to do everything; what questions do you have in mind to ask me?”
—What surprises you most about mankind?
— God answered: ‘That they get bored of being children, are in a rush to grow up, and then long to be children again. That they lose their health to make money and then lose their money to restore their health. That by thinking anxiously about the future, they forget the present, such that they live neither for the present nor the future. That they live as if they will never die, and they die as if they had never lived.’”
“‘Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me.’ He replied to him, ‘Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?’” (Lc 12: 13-14) But Jesus was limited to his task. He has not come to this world to be a judge on economic issues between contenders. But takes the opportunity to dig into something important: both brothers tried to misappropriate the other’s part. And Jesus warns sternly against the dangers of coveting and greed.
Last Wednesday, Most Rev. Felipe Arismendi, Bishop of San Cristobal de las Casas, wrote in a reflection that he shares every week: “Criticism is raining on the good Pope Francis. Many people do not support his simple lifestyle, his merciful openness to those people are away from the Church, his relationship with Protestants and Muslims, his relentless condemnation of the fetishism of money, his defined and evangelical option for the poor and other excluded people, his respect for those of other sexual orientations, his insistence on the need for a change of the economic system, his reform of the Pontifical Curia, his proximity to migrants, his insistence on going to the peripheries, his calls to conversion of bishops and priests, his support for the just popular struggles, his invitation to young people to make noise (to get involved), his defense of the earth as a mother and sister, his improvised and undiplomatic speeches, which sometimes lend themselves to misunderstandings or inaccuracies, etc.”
“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!’” (Lc 12: 18-19). The rich fool has forgotten that man is master of things, but still is only an administrator. The rich fool can’t find the path to happiness that comes from generosity and sharing money and goods things with others. The projects of the rich man are based on fragile assumptions: the security of a long life for enjoying, forgetting that life is a gift that we have received from God.
Pope Francis, when he was opening the assembly of the Diocese of Rome, last June 16th, said: “The evangelical realism is committed to the other, with others, and does not make ideals and what ‘must be’ an obstacle to meeting others in the situations where they are.”
Please, do not brand the Pope as a socialist, but open your hearts to the gospel and the Petrine magisterium that help us focus our faith and actions of faith. Having a balance between material goods and spiritual things. Defending life, not only of the unborn, but at every stage of life, including the life of the elderly.