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Eighteenth Sunday in OrdinaryTime Reading I – Ecclesiastes 1:2; 2:21-23 Reading II – Colossians 3:1-5, 9-11 Gospel – Luke 12:13-21 Values to Live By - Today’s Scriptures contain some catch phrases that are still quite familiar in our world: “All is vanity,” and “Eat, drink, and be merry” are both Scriptural in origin. In the same way that it is easy to pray last week’s Lord’s Prayer thoughtlessly, it is easy to let the potent passages of Scripture that are built on these common sayings glide right off our slick ears. Last week’s Scriptures instructed us to listen attentively to the Lord, so that we might pray carefully. Our listening and our prayer are inti mately connected. In the same way, this week we learn that our values and our living are con nected as well. It has become quite common to ask, “Do you own your possessions or do they own you?” Like the familiar maxims from today’s Readings, we might be tempted to quote this saying flippantly, and think that in the quoting of it we have truly consid ered it, perhaps lived it. Not true, Qoheleth, Paul and Jesus tell us today. It is not wrong to treasure or cherish things of earth or of our own humanity; it is only wrong when those things we cherish are not of God, are not of the self-giving Christ. Copyright, J.S. Paluch Co. |
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