Gospel Commentary for Monday, October 20, 2025

Becoming Rich in God’s Eyes

In the sharp reply Jesus gives to the man who asks Him to intervene in an inheritance dispute with his brother, He clearly warns us about what not to ask God for in prayer. We can’t expect God to solve the problems that are ours to deal with. God respects our freedom and wants us to use it. We can’t and shouldn’t ask God to do what He asks us to do, turning Him into a kind of magic fix for situations He’s already given us the tools to handle. God, who gave us freedom, wants us to exercise it. That’s why the best way to truly help someone in need is to encourage their own independence.

This means using the goods of the earth responsibly. But since independence doesn’t mean self-sufficiency, we need the wisdom to give these goods their proper value—to not make them absolute, like the foolish rich man did. He thought he had secured himself once and for all, becoming rich in things he couldn’t take to the grave, while forgetting to become rich before God.

That doesn’t mean we have to pit earthly and heavenly goods against each other, as if we had to reject one to gain the other. Both come from God. Jesus Himself, who fed the hungry and healed the sick, taught us to ask in prayer for our daily bread.

The man in today’s parable had a stroke of luck and became immensely rich. But he could have also become rich in God’s eyes if, instead of hoarding all those riches for himself, he had opened his barns to share them with the hungry. That very night he would still have had to give up his life, unable to take his fortune with him, but he would have appeared before God adorned with the wealth of a duty fulfilled in justice, the freedom of generosity, the maturity of love—and also with the gratitude and blessing of the poor who were filled with those passing goods. And yet, when transformed by the values of heaven, such goods are by no means in vain.

Fraternal greetings,