Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle C
Reflecting on Luke 12: 32-48
If you’re one of those people who love to be scared, who love ghost stories and haunted houses and movies about people waiting in corners with hatchets, have I got some great reading for you. It’s called the Business Section.
There you can read, until weak with terror, about the money you were supposed to have saved, the real estate you should have bought, about how you certainly should have several years of “liquidity” built up for the inevitable rainy day when all the bad decisions you’ve made come home to roost.
Recall Fagan, in the movie version of Oliver Twist, sneaking upstairs to his safe, oh-so-quietly taking out his treasures, and lovingly petting his stolen jewels from a lifetime of picking a pocket or two. He’s old now, and this is his security. This is all that stands between him and the beggar’s prison. Charles Dickens, magnificent Christian and the conscience of 19th century England, shone a light on the social injustice of his times. And when he wrote a book for his children about Jesus he used the gospel of Luke―today’s gospel, in fact― as his template.
Where your treasure is, there will your heart be. I know many wealthy people. They have amassed huge treasures, whose names are Care for those who have no one, Friendship with those most in need of God’s mercy, and Faithfulness to their spouses and their children, in good times and in bad.
This is what I observe about those who have built up “money bags that won’t wear out:” they are all surrounded by people who love them. That’s a treasure not even Fagan can steal.
How are you building an “inexhaustible treasure in heaven”?
Kathy McGovern ©2022