Why do we practice our faith?  Why do we attend Mass?  These are questions we should be able to answer in some form though there are many ways to answer them.  Let us ask the same question about why the people were flocking to get close to Jesus in today’s Gospel from Luke 12:13-21.

   Earlier in the chapter we learn that Jesus is instructing His disciples while the people crowd around them.  After some time a man, seemingly impatient with hearing Jesus speak, shouts out, “Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me.” (LK 12:13)  The man has clearly shown us that he is only interested in what directly affects him, here and now.  Jesus certainly could have ignored the man but instead He takes the opportunity to teach.  He goes on to tell the people the “Parable of the Rich Fool”.  We hear how a man who receives a much greater than expected bounty, seeks not to share it with others but to hoard it for himself.  The man unwittingly will die that night and will not reap the reward he seeks.  Instead, he will lose everything, including his chance of true life in heaven.  How many of us have received a greater than expected bounty in our lives?  Have we chosen to share it with God or spend lavishly on ourselves, or to store up our worldly riches in the form of “stuff”?

   One way to answer the first two questions above would be to say that we seek to be in communion with God; to build on our relationship with Him.  In order to do this we must hear His instruction and then we must pray and discern on how this instruction would be applied to our lives.  Are we focused only on what satisfies our needs here in this life, as the man in the parable, or do we seek to do that which will store up for us, “treasure in heaven”? (MT 6:20)