Three friends decided to go in together and buy a lottery ticket. To their great joy, they
won the grand prize of a million dollars. They get together and they start talking, and one
of the friends says, “This is a blessing, but how much do we keep for ourselves, and how
much should we give to God?” After a few minutes he said, “Let’s draw a circle and throw
the money up in the air. Whatever lands out of the circle we’ll keep, and whatever lands in
the circle we’ll give to God.” The second friend says, “That’s a good idea, but it’s a little
windy. I think we should throw the money up in the air, and whatever lands in the circle we
keep, and whatever lands outside the circle we give to God.” Then they turn to the third
friend and ask his opinion, and he says, “I think we should throw the money up in the air,
and whatever God wants He can keep, and we’ll keep the rest for ourselves.”
Of course, God has no need for money or any earthly thing, for that matter. But we do.
We need money to buy food and shelter and other things. Money is necessary. But
money can become an addiction. The desire to be wealthy and to accumulate lots of stuff
is a real temptation to many people. The desire to be rich can lead to the sin of greed,
which if you haven’t noticed yet, is the major theme of the readings today. Jesus
encourages us to recognize the dangers of greed and to foster instead a spirit of true
generosity and reliance on God.
So what is greed? It’s one of the seven deadly sins, according to the Church. We have
this image in our mind of the greedy person hugging money or swimming in a pool of
money. Very absurd images, of course. Most of the time, greed takes a very different
form. Jesus, in fact, says that there are “all kinds of greed” – and I think in the Gospel
today we see at least two forms that are present, which we need to guard against: 1) The
greed that causes us to want to hoard stuff (probably the most common image of greed);
and 2) The greed that causes us to refuse to be generous with others. Both are
dangerous to us spiritually.
St. Thomas Aquinas says that greed is actually a very serious sin, because it directly
affects our neighbor – a person cannot over-abound in riches without someone else
lacking them. There’s a finite amount of stuff in the world—there’s a finite amount of
riches—and if we accumulate more and more for ourselves, we end up depriving others of
it. I can’t go to the store and buy up all the ice cream without knowing that the next person
that comes in wanting ice cream has to go without. That’s greed. And I can’t have a
freezer full of ice cream and refuse to give a visitor some when he asks. That’s greed too.
The first time I was confronted with this on a global scale was when I was in college. I took
a class on World Hunger and learned for the first time that the world actually produces
more than enough food to feed everyone on earth. A lot of people think we don’t, and they
use that as a rationale for abortion and contraception. The real problem is, there are those
who are doing just what the rich man in the Gospel did – they hoard the grains and
produce in huge bins, not allowing it to be distributed to those who need it most. So it
often sits there and goes bad. Pope Francis talked about this at the end of June, saying
that it’s a scandal that so many in our world are starving even though we have enough
food. We need to find a way, he said, to enable everyone to benefit from the fruits of the
earth. He recognizes how the world’s richest 1% live extravagantly so, while two-thirds of
the world is barely scraping by. We have to recognize how blessed we are to live in a
society where most of us have our basic needs fulfilled. You may not realize it, but we are
among the world’s richest people – it’s said that even the poorest 5% of Americans live
better than most in the world, because the median income of the world is little more than
$1200 a year.
So there’s a sense of justice that needs to be confronted here. Today Jesus responds to
the man in the crowd who wants justice done between him and his brother regarding their
inheritance. So Jesus says, “I know you want justice here, but remember to guard against
greed.” He’s not saying that possessions and wealth are bad. But he is disappointed that
after having spent time preaching the truths of God, still the first concern on this man’s
mind is worldly things, his share of the inheritance. Jesus’ words of eternal life had fallen
on deaf ears, because this man’s heart was fixed on his love of money and not on love of
God. True justice cannot be done without first showing justice toward God, and making
Him our first love.
Of all the passages in Scripture, St. Paul in his Letter to Timothy speaks best about this.
He says, “The love of money is the root of all evils” (1 Timothy 6:10). Note well: He’s not
saying that money is the problem, but the love of money. And he says today that greed is
idolatry – it’s loving created things more than God. He says we need to put that to death,
so we can love what really matters. God gives us such abundance so we can bless others
with them, not so we can hoard them for ourselves.
Which brings us to the remedy for greed, which is generosity and detachment. Greed can
be overcome simply by being generous with others, not giving to them our leftovers or
scraps, but something that respects their dignity. How many of us go through our
cupboards from time to time to donate food, but only give the food that’s expired or only
the food that we and the kids refuse to eat? Or go through our closets and donate only the
clothes that are dirty or torn? Giving is always good, of course, but what about giving to
others what we would buy for ourselves? Maybe that means giving brand-name foods or
the latest fashions. How generous would that be! We should never look at others are less
than ourselves, so why would we give to them less than what we would give to ourselves?
Detachment is the other virtue, a discipline that helps us recognize that there’s a limit to
what material things can do for us, and there’s a limit to the happiness we can get from
material things. Detachment helps us recognize that God and others and our relationships
are much more important than any thing we could possess. It allows us to let go of the
excess stuff in our life, to not see giving as a burden but as a joy – in the end it helps us to
be more generous with others.
Both of these virtues—generosity and detachment—help us to avoid greed, and they help
us to avoid the love of money and things. So today we ask the Lord for a greater
outpouring of these virtues, so we can respond to Jesus’ word today and love Him above
all things.