Monday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time
October 21, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/102124.cfm

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Someone in the crowd said to Jesus,
“Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me.”
He replied to him,
“Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?”
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 12:13-15

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We’ve all heard the all too true adage, “You can’t take it with you.” That’s the lesson in Jesus’s parable today. But the story conveys an even broader meaning. It is not only greed for possessions that waylays us, it is the distraction they cause from the true essence of life in God.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:
We ask for the courage and grace to focus our lives on God and God’s Creation. Within that focus, we will have a clearer understanding of what we truly need in life and what is simply a diversion.

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Poetry: I Dream a World … – Langston Hughes

I dream a world where man
No other man will scorn,
Where love will bless the earth
And peace its paths adorn
I dream a world where all
Will know sweet freedom's way,
Where greed no longer saps the soul
Nor avarice blights our day.
A world I dream where black or white,
Whatever race you be,
Will share the bounties of the earth
And every man is free,
Where wretchedness will hang its head
And joy, like a pearl,
Attends the needs of all mankind-
Of such I dream, my world!

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Music: Mercedes Benz – Janis Joplin

Joplin’s rock song might move us to realize that, even in unrecognized greediness, we sometimes ask God for the wrong things.