Today we are reminded of our true inheritance. Jesus recounts the parable of the bountiful harvester who decides to enlarge his granaries to set aside his largesse to fuel a life of ease and greed. In stark contrast is Our God who lavishes His treasures on us despite our willful, sinful nature. For His Nature is Divine Mercy, Immeasurable Love, and Bountiful Grace!
The Parable Of The Rich Fool
Then he said to the crowd, “Take care to guard against all greed, for though one may be rich, one’s life does not consist of possessions.” Luke 12:15
The wealthy landowner was blessed with much which becomes more. He stops to consider what to do with the abundant harvest. After consulting himself, he decides to accumulate in order to celebrate for his foreseeable future. God intervenes, reminding him that his future was greatly accelerated, and in fact, his life would be forfeit that very day. All those possessions, to whom would they now belong?
The parable goes on to pose this question: What matters to God? This is the very question the greedy one failed to ask.
By Grace You Were Saved
Saint Paul has a magnificently elaborate comma filled sentence at the heart of today’s epistle to the Ephesians. Here are the takeaways from that sentence. God is rich in mercy. We are greatly loved by God. We were dead through sin but have been brought to life with Christ. By Grace we have been saved! God has raised us up with Him. God has seated us with Him in the heavens. (All of this without pausing for breath, thank you, dear lectors, who proclaim the word of God to us faithfully and with all your skill!)
The Scriptures are full of seeming contradictions. Saint Paul tells us that we are not saved by good works, but at the end says we are precisely called to do good works!
Let’s dip into his offering once more. And why have we been saved by grace? This is not from us, this is from God, this is not from works, so that we may not boast. What then? It is for us to show the immeasurable riches of his grace in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
There is More
By Grace we were saved. But it is not enough to have faith alone if the one next to me does not believe. So God wants our good works to shine for others to see, not only does He want this, He expects it from us, He demands it from us, He has prepared us for this from all eternity.
For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works that God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them. Ephesians 2:10
The Jews believed in good works, but Paul, a Pharisee calls out the fallacy of this, yet at the end he stresses the importance of the same. Contradiction? No! He is simply saying that works are not the cause of our salvation but rather it is only via faith in Jesus. And then as a consequence of said faith, we are impelled to do good works.
The Nature Of Things
The world today is seized by artificial intelligence. At its core is the question of the flesh. It revives the age-old problem of Dualism, where the body is viewed as a prison for the soul. There is a dangerous trend of seeking to build up treasure for oneself, of seeking immortality by pushing past the limitations of the flawed body and seeing transhumanism or posthumanism as the solutions. According to our Christian tradition, it is ingrained in our very nature to strive for eternity, so there are some similarities to today’s narrative. The difference is that modern technology seeks salvation from the body. It denies the salvific action of the Crucified Savior.
Here’s the Christian message. By our sinful nature, we are hopelessly trapped in spirals of sin, doomed forever with hell the just retribution that is our due. We are all “children of wrath”, the saints are the ones who keenly remind us of our wretchedness. No artificial savior can hold out any hope! The Four Last Things (Death, Judgement, Heaven, Hell) are finalities that all human flesh has to face. At the end of our life, there is only one password that gets past the pearly gates.
Grace!
Great job, once again, Patrick. Keep up the good work. John.