Children, it’s nice, it’s fun to have toys, isn’t it? And donuts too! But aren’t they so much more fun when you have friends to play with the toys and eat donuts with? Suppose you had all the toys you wanted but never got to play with anybody with them. You could not share them. Nobody to talk to. That would make you sad, wouldn’t it? God shares with us. He made everything, the world, us as well so we could play in the world. He shares Jesus with us. He shares His Love with us. He made us so we can be happy. God and us share with each other, we share with God our happiness with each other and that makes God happy for He made us to be with Him and each other. Please share, ok?
The Oxford dictionary defines freedom as not being subject to arbitrary, despotic control. Not subject to necessity or fate. It further defines liberty as release from bondage, bondage to sin. To have the actions one’s nature states we should have. The point of God’s revelation to us in Scripture and in Christ is to allow us the ability, if we choose, act as, in and of our true nature. The nature we have in commonality with our Creator, endowing us with His Spirit. God is a Trinity. A communion, community of love that looks as individuals outside themselves to give in total love to the other two in the Trinity. It was a Greek philosopher who said we are political animals. By this he meant we are social animals. Social beings who live in social relationships, it is our nature to do so. We as human beings are incomplete without other people; we cannot be fully human without relating to other people. We are not living in our nature; we do not have the freedom of living in our nature if we do not relate to others. We cannot be fully human without giving ourselves to others. Not to do so is to not live within our nature thus we live lacking freedom and liberty. Rather we live hemmed in by fears and concerns for tomorrow or we can only form our souls by being with ourselves and this is not good for us.
Jesus by this parable is trying to teach us all these concerns of ours, getting our share of the inheritance, will we have enough for the future, the promotion and car, end with this life. Look beyond it to eternal life with or without God. Yes!! It is good to have money. As a Benedictine I am especially glad you have money. But who is in control of whom? The rich man thought his possessions and good times to come were enough. There was no other reason to concern himself with. In many ways he wanted to love his humanity and simply become a consuming animal. Let us suppose this fellow as well as stating he wanted to have a good time also said – what will also make me happy is to feed the poor, help people with all my money. If God would come to him that night and tell him he was to die then and there would God had started His address with the word “FOOL”?
Jesus did not come to solve our social problems. To judge who is more worthy of a purely earthly inheritance and how much. He came to reconcile us with God, a lacking of God of which is the root cause of our social problems for without God we lack the liberty to act in our true natures. If we have the love of God in our souls, we can use them and our intellects to solve our problems.
God does not want each of us locked up in our own little worlds, our own little dungeons where we can make our own worlds, where in some we think of nothing of ourselves or in others we decide we need to take a gun and charge into a public place. God wants us loving each other and having fun just as He has fun loving us – so share a donut or two, ok? Be not afraid for Christ goes before us always. Did He not say I have conquered the world?
Fr. Andrew is a monk of St. Louis Abbey.