The Rich Fool - Fr. Gregory - November 22, 2020

We have often heard that money is neither good nor bad but simply a means to an end. Father Gregory shares with us an uplifting message about how God thinks about money and its proper use. Today on the 9th Sunday of Luke the Gospel reading comes to us from Luke 12:16-21. In this pericope Jesus tells the parable of The Rich Fool to a crowd and to us illustrating to both that He came to bring God and not property to the world. A certain rich man who is a successful businessman by the world's standards has an abundance of crops and can only think within himself to tear down the barns he has and build bigger ones to store his surplus. The man from a worldly sense is smart but from a spiritual sense his is not, therefore God calls him a fool. God is interested in forming the way we think and see the world. We are to think how Christ thinks and we acquire this mind of the Spirit when we enter into and live according to the seasons of the Church. When we understand how the Church thinks we understand how Christ thinks because He is the head of the Church. As Orthodox Christians our security is on God and not things therefore, we should make almsgiving a priority and act our way into a right way of thinking to show that our reliance is on Him.