Today we read the Gospel from Luke 12:16-21, the Parable of the Rich Fool. The main theme of the Gospel is that of wealth and thanksgiving.
It is the story of an abundantly rich man who throughout life has been extremely successful. However, Jesus does not call the man successful, instead he calls him a fool. We know that a fool is someone who blinds himself to a fundamental truth, a person who by self deception commits an enormous blunder. You see greed led this man to make a huge mistake about life, for what was missing in this man’s heart was gratitude.
The rich man having had a good harvest concerned himself with the lack of even more storage areas to accumulate even more wealth thinking that this would provide him with even more lasting security, as if he didn’t have enough already. But when Jesus called him to give account for his soul, he asked the rich fool, “who will get all these things you have kept…”
You can see that the rich fool’s wealth separated him from the most important thing, God. Not that wealth is bad but what attitude towards material possessions can make them positive that the rich fool lacked? It was his failure to recognize and overcome his greed, rather than preparing himself to be “rich in God’s sight”.
St. Clement of Alexandria said, “For he who holds possessions…and houses…as the gifts of God, and ministers from them to the God Who gives them for the salvation of people, and knows that he possesses them more for the sake of the brethren than his own, and us superior to the possession of them, not the slave of the things he possesses, and does not carry them about in his soul, nor bind and circumscribed his life with them, but is ever labouring at some good and divine work…this is he who is blessed by the Lord, and called poor in spirit, a meet heir of the Kingdom of heaven”.
So let us thank the Lord for all the rich blessings and especially for sending forth to us the Heavenly Bread, food for the whole world, Jesus Christ, who became poor so that we might become rich. Amen!
