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Commentary by Fr. Jesús Fernández on the Gospel of Sunday, September 29 (Lk 16, 19-31)

By 28 September, 2019January 3rd, 2023No Comments

When today’s Gospel speaks of listening to Moses and the prophets, it is speaking, for us, of listening to the Gospel. When at another time Christ says that it is difficult for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, he speaks of those who are rich not only in money and goods but also in pride, arrogance, pettiness and therefore have a hard heart, incapable of loving and practicing justice.

We have to practice justice and generosity with those who have less – the poor. All human beings have the right to be happy. Christ calls us to a righteous sense of justice and a humble effort to share with those in need not only goods but to find open ways to those in need around us.

The problem is to accumulate and not share with people in serious difficulties. To follow Christ, who is love, is to practice justice and peace with those most in need. We can’t go by people’s poverty. If I live the Gospel of holiness I have to share my material and spiritual goods with others.

No one can serve two masters, either he has an aversion to the one and love for the other, or he will lend his adhesion to the former and despise the latter: we cannot serve God and money at the same time (Mt 6:24). Here it is spoken of loving money exaggeratedly and dishonestly, wasting it with full hands, without benefit for any person, only for him.

(The rich Epulon and the poor Lazarus, who begged for some food at the door of the rich mansion).

A rich man can live evangelical poverty. Christian poverty is part of charity, which is justice and love. A rich person can conduct himself uprightly, ordered to the aim of the person. There are rich people and kings who practiced a true detachment of their goods. That is to say, to know how to use goods correctly, not to be a slave to them.

There is no evil in the goods of this world, for they come from God and are at the service, not without effort, of human beings. Evil comes from the misuse of those goods. Detachment, sobriety, generosity in helping the needy. Our Father is the true treasure.