Daily Gospel Reflection - Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Bishop Robert Barron
July 31,2022
Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Gospel: Lk 12:13-21
Someone in the crowd said to Jesus,
“Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me.”
He replied to him,
“Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?”
Then he said to the crowd,
“Take care to guard against all greed,
for though one may be rich,
one’s life does not consist of possessions.”
Then he told them a parable.
“There was a rich man whose land produced a bountiful harvest.
He asked himself, ‘What shall I do,
for I do not have space to store my harvest?’
And he said, ‘This is what I shall do:
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,
rest, eat, drink, be merry!”’
But God said to him,
‘You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you;
and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?’
Thus will it be for all who store up treasure for themselves
but are not rich in what matters to God.”
*United States Conference of Catholic
Bishop Robert Barron
Friends, today in our Gospel, Jesus tells of a rich man who has been so successful that he doesn’t have enough space to store his harvest. So he tears down his barns and builds bigger ones. But that very night, he dies—and all of it comes to naught. "Thus will it be for all who store up treasure for themselves but are not rich in what matters to God."
No matter how good, how beautiful a state of affairs is here below, it is destined to pass into nonbeing. That sunset that I enjoyed last night—that radiantly beautiful display—is now forever gone. It lasted only a while. That beautiful person—attractive, young, full of life, creative, joyful—will eventually age, get sick, break down, and die.
An image that always comes to mind when I think of these things is the gorgeous firework that bursts open like a giant flower and then, in the twinkling of an eye, is gone forever. Everything is haunted by nonbeing. Everything, finally, is a bubble.
But this is not meant to depress us; it is meant to redirect our attention precisely to the things that are "above," to the eternity of God.
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