Sunday Gospel Reflection
August 3, 2025 Cycle C
Luke 12:13-21
Reprinted by permission of the, “Arlington
Catholic Herald.”
True Wealth
by Fr. Joseph M. Rampino
Home Page
To Sunday
Gospel Reflections Index
It is a fascinating
feature of human
behavior that we both spend incredible effort to build and
ornament the tombs
of our great and mighty and continue to visit them as
touchstones of our unique
cultures.
Mausolea from Arlington
to Paris to
Florence to Egypt to Beijing serve as tourist destinations
either outright
celebrating the glory of the deceased, telling their tales as
legends, or at
least offering them as curiosities. So often, these tombs are to
the present
day covered in precious artwork and materials, and those whose
mortal remains
rest therein often lived lives surrounded in worldly honor and
comfort
commensurate with the beauty of their graves. It is difficult to
visit these
sorts of places without thinking of axioms as great as “sic
transit gloria
mundi” (“thus passes the glory of the world”), or as simple as
“you can’t take
it with you.” No matter what the grand and honored dead once
possessed or
ruled, they entered death alone, and no amount of funeral
splendor can enrich
them any longer.
Christ in today’s Gospel
calls us to
reflect on precisely this stark truth. “This night your life
will be demanded
of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they
belong?” This is a
simple truth, and it might seem obvious to us. No matter how
much we save up,
we cannot enjoy our stockpiles once life ends.
Yet, Christ’s teaching
about the
impermanence of worldly goods refers to much more than
possessions, since our
possessions are always about more than themselves. What we own
and our desire
to possess are an extension of our spiritual state and our
fundamental attitude
toward reality. Greed is never just greed, but is tied up with
gluttony,
whereby I long for more and more pleasure or comfort, as well as
with fear and
the desire to control, since my accumulation of wealth is my
defense against
the future. What’s more, greed is connected to pride, since by
accumulating
possessions, I believe that in searching for True wealth: I
am drawing
more and more of the world to myself, building myself up rather
than my
neighbor or the church of God.
Christ teaches today
that all these
desires for pleasures and comfort, for defense against the
future, for building
myself up, are not only off the mark, but will all end in vain.
No matter how
comfortable, secure or grand I might become in this world, all
of it will be
taken at the moment of my death. The mightiest figures of human
history all
entered God’s throne room as paupers. Presidents, kings,
pharaohs, emperors,
generals, artists, philosophers, scientists, tycoons, and heroes
of this world
have all gone before the presence of almighty God as poor little
souls,
entirely dependent on divine mercy.
Of course, there is one
thing that
makes it possible for a human being, though small, to enter
heaven as one who
is glorious. Jesus refers to it when he mentions being “rich in
what matters to
God.” That one thing by which greatness is measured in eternity
is charity,
that is, love for God above all things, and love for others
because they have
come from God. It is by degrees of charity that the saints are
ranked in God’s
kingdom, the greatest being those who have loved God and
neighbor most.
So then, the only way
for my worldly
possessions or status to give me comfort, security, or grandeur
in eternal life
is if I use them to become rich in charity, that is, if I use
what is mine to
practice love for God and for my neighbor. If I do this, then no
matter the
glory of my tomb here in this world, I will share in the glory
that belongs to
God himself.