Sunday Readings: Ecclesiastes 1.2; 2.21-23, Colossians 3.1-5, 9-11, Luke 12.13-2
Jesus told the crowd this parable. The land of a rich person produced abundantly. He thought to himself, “What shall I do? I have no place to store my harvest. I know. I will pull down my grain bins and build larger ones. All my grain and my goods will go there. Then I will say to myself: ‘You have blessings in reserve for years to come. Relax! Eat heartily, drink well. Enjoy yourself.’” But God said to the man, “You fool! This very night your life will be demanded of you. To whom will all this piled up wealth of yours go?” (Luke 12.16-2).
The Mega lottery will soar over $1 billion this week. A winner will have an abundant harvest like the rich man in Sunday’s gospel. Undoubtedly many have plans to help others with such a windfall. But not the man in the parable. He has no idea what to do with his abundance than to build bigger bins to hold the grain.
An economics professor invited me to talk about the principles of Catholic social teaching in her class. The first two principles are foundational— the human person is sacred, made in God’s image, and social, unable to thrive without others in family and community. Every person has basic rights to food, water, shelter, health care, education—the necessities of life—and has corresponding duties to help provide these for all, to seek the common good.
However, for us who live in a capitalist economy that emphasizes the individual, we mqy not see ourselves as our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. To opt for the poor among us, to lift up the lowest and least, and refuse to leave people out may seem too communitarian.
In the economics class an adult student raised her hand and observed, “It’s no sin to be as rich as you can be.” I disagreed. In Laudato Si’, Pope Francis calls us to change our lifestyles because we are consuming Earth’s resources at levels that cannot be universalized (#50). “The natural environment is a collective good, the patrimony of all humanity and the responsibility of everyone,” Pope Francis writes.
How much is enough? What is abundance or?
