Greed!

"Someone in the crowd spoke to JESUS, 'Master, tell my brother to share with me the family inheritance.'  HE replied, 'My friend, who has appointed ME as your judge or your attorney?'  Then JESUS said to the people, 'Be on your guard and avoid every kind of greed, for even though you have many possessions, it is not that which gives you life.' 

And JESUS continued with this story, 'There was a rich man, and his land had produced a good harvest.  He thought:  'What shall I do?  For I am short of room to store my harvest.'  So this is what he planned:  'I will pull down my barns and build bigger ones to store all this grain, which is my wealth.  Then I may say to myself:  My friend, you have a lot of good things put by for many years.  Rest, eat, drink and enjoy yourself.'  But GOD said to him:  'You fool!  This very night your life will be taken from you.  Tell ME who shall get all you have put aside?  This is the lot of the one who stores up riches for himself and is not wealthy in the eyes of GOD'." - Luke 12:13-21  

(Who has appointed me as your judge?  JESUS does not resolve legal differences as do the teachers of the Law since it was the Law that decided civil and religious questions.  JESUS reserves HIS authority for what is essential:  suppressing the greed ingrained in our hearts is more important than looking at every person's right with a magnifying glass.

 

Avoid every kind of greed.   JESUS does not say people should be resigned to mediocrity or destitution, satisfied to have ten people sleep in the same room, and without any opportunity for education.  We know that all this prevents the growth of people in awareness of their dignity and their divine vocation.  JESUS does not criticize our efforts to achieve a more just society, since the whole Bible requires it.

 

It is one thing to seek justice, knowing that without justice there is neither peace nor communion; it is quite another to look at what others have with the desire to share their greed.  Today we clamor for justice, but tomorrow we may only seek more superfluous "necessities".  Such greed will never let us rest and, what is more, it will close the door of the Kingdom on us.

 

Possessions do not give life.  Make sure that your concern to have what you lack does not make you neglect what could give you life now.

 

In this regard, we should allow the poor to speak, all those brothers and sisters of ours who, though immersed in poverty, continue to be persons who live, in the strongest sense of this word.  Should we pity them, or should we count them among the few who already enjoy the Kingdom of GOD?  One of the greatest obstacles preventing the liberation of people is their own greed.  The day they agree to participate in powerful boycotts and not go their own way in the pursuit of advantages for one or other category, they shall begin to live as people.
 

 What shall I do?  The rich man in the parable planned for larger barns for his sole profit and JESUS condemned him.  We too must consider what we should do to bring about a better distribution of the riches of the world.

 

The person who amasses for GOD knows how to find happiness in the present moment.  Wherever she is, she tries to create a network of social relationships through which everyone gives to others and receives from them instead of wanting and getting things in a selfish way.)

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