Daily Reflection Monday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time

Although Jesus does not specifically speak of any actual punishment in the parable today, it is implied both in God calling the greedy rich man a fool for trusting in his wealth, and in Jesus finally saying, “Thus will it be for the one who stores up treasure for himself but is not rich in what matters to God.”

“What matters to God?” then, becomes the question. It is a very good question, I feel. If we knew the answer to that question, it could help us focus ourselves in seeking that alone. Only what is important to God, what truly matters, is worth seeking. In many ways, what matters to God is the same as saying God’s will be done. We know that Jesus’ will, his final commandment was for us to love one another as he loved us. The simplest answer to how do we do that is to seek to do everything that helps us more love our neighbor and abandon all behavior or thought that leads us away from that love through selfishness and fear. Love is what matters most to God.

We are well advised to practice each day things that help us love one another, things like humility and forgiveness, patience, tolerance, gentleness and kindness, mercy and compassion and the embrace of any kind. Only by learning to see everyone as a person in need, a person who could benefit from our care and attention, as we could benefit from theirs, will we learn how to meet that need. We meet it usually by first identifying with it to learn how we are all one, all the same beneath appearances. Then we come to learn that everyone we meet is God’s gift to us. They are someone we can love. Then we begin to cease resisting in any of the many ways we do. We begin to accept more and more as God’s gift until we come to the awareness that all is God’s gift to us because it was given in love. It us our sacred trust to seek to give that same gift of love in return to all we meet. All we need is the desire and willingness to do this, and God will do all the rest for us. “Ask and it shall be given to you.”