How rich are you? How much do you have? Remember where you live. I’m suspecting that most who read these remarks live in the USA in the 21^st Century. That means that, by comparison with the rest of the people on Planet Earth, you and I are rich, living among the top 5% of the wealthiest people ever to have lived. That does not mean you don’t have financial challenges or that you are able to purchase anything you want. Today, you might even be unemployed! It does, however, mean that among all the people who live now, you have been blessed in ways that most of them can only dream about or watch in movies. Freedom, mobility, a variety of food and clothing, educational opportunities, a social life, religious faith, relative social safety, political and civil rights . . . all these you can engage more or less in the ways you choose to engage them. Again, we are rich! From where do these riches come? God has blessed America and other countries with opportunity and all that goes with it. And, other people (i.e., your ancestors, immediate family and friends, even relative strangers) have done things for your benefit either directly or indirectly, deliberately or accidentally.

Today’s texts are a collection of walks down the Memory Lanes of our religious imaginations, about those who came before us in Salvation History. The walk culminates in the Gospel obligation that those already blessed are expected to be themselves providers of blessings to others. The Church asks us to remember that we have faith because of God’s work through our ancestors in faith. The Good News did not begin with us. Neither with us will it end. But, it is ours because others lived it first, reflected upon it, and eventually handed it on to us. The Wisdom text of today’s first reading is the last of a series of reminders in the Book of the Wisdom of Solomon (likely the final book of the Old Testament to be written). It is a memory of those early Israelites through whom God worked as they sought and found freedom from slavery in Egypt and in the responsibilities of growing in the faith early in their new religion. The original Passover was the historical marker that both freedom and salvation had arrived, but not yet been fully perfected or appreciated. The author of the Letter to the Christians of Hebrew Descent (aka the Hebrews) recalls the heroic lives of Abraham and Sarah who were quite elderly people (75 and about 65 years of age respectively) when they first heard the call and offer of an unnamed God new to them. Yet they both believed, produced a new ethnic group of believers, and effectively became the heroic first parents of the religion of Freedom and Salvation. This new direction bestowed by a new God made possible all the positive and creative events which we appreciate in our own modern era. Had Abraham and Sarah and their descendants lived without the creativity they demonstrated, and without the thoughtfulness the Law of Moses later revealed, embraced and fostered, then the world might still be appreciated as the ancients did: flat, hostile, changeless and mediocre. But, the faith of Abraham and Sarah initiated the religious setting in which Jesus of Nazareth announced the Good News that Life, Freedom and Salvation were what the world was about! As he said in John’s Gospel (10), “I came that they might have life and have it to the full!”

Jesus’ exhortations to fear not, to give alms, and to embrace inexhaustible heavenly treasures are metaphors for embracing and appreciating the Life, Freedom and Salvation which had been more than hinted at for nearly two millennia before him. In today’s text they are somewhat glamorous metaphors. In the larger Gospel scheme of things, they are other words for the exhortation to embrace the Cross of Christ. Today we find ourselves a further two thousand years after Jesus, and are able – unlike any who ever came before us – to see and appreciate the glimpses of what “full” life might be. Much has been given us; more will be expected of us. We live in the modern world of complex political, technological, scientific, ecological, sociological and economic realities unlike any before us. We are necessarily more aware of and more capable of engaging so many more aspects of life on Earth than were any of our ancestors. We discover and experience triumphs and tragedies in real time, and thus the stresses and pressures to be connected to, engaged in and with, and responsive to so many events weighs heavily upon us. Such instantaneous awareness makes us instantly responsible. We share in events around the globe. We share our resources when tragedy strikes and challenges erupt. Because we are relatively rich and because much has been entrusted to us, much is therefore expected from us. To whom can those in need turn, if not to us when we have and manage so much as God’s stewards? How can we deny our assistance to others in their need when we are the very goal towards which they strive and hope? How we live the Gospel is what others see in us! How we give of ourselves because of both our humanity and our adult faith is how others see the Gospel alive in us! To the extent that others witness us practical witnesses to the Gospel, they may well in turn be attracted to the Gospel! This is the most effective sort of evangelization: how you and I live the Gospel!

How rich are we? Rich enough to live the Gospel in thankfulness, wisdom and generosity! If Christ is in us, then we must do the very works of Christ! What DID Jesus do? Let us do likewise!