Gospel Reflection on Luke 12:32-48

August 10, 2025

“Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms; provide yourselves with purses that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

“Let your loins be girded and your lamps burning, and be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the marriage feast, so that they may open to him at once when he comes and knocks. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes; truly, I say to you, he will gird himself and have them sit at table, and he will come and serve them. If he comes in the second watch, or in the third, and finds them so, blessed are those servants! But know this, that if the householder had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would have been awake and would not have left his house to be broken into. You also must be ready; for the Son of man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”

Peter said, “Lord, are you telling this parable for us or for all?” And the Lord said, “Who then is the faithful and wise steward, whom his master will set over his household, to give them their portion of food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master when he comes will find so doing. Truly, I tell you, he will set him over all his possessions. But if that servant says to himself, ‘My master is delayed in coming,’ and begins to beat the menservants and the maidservants, and to eat and drink and get drunk, the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know, and will punish him, and put him with the unfaithful. And that servant who knew his master’s will, but did not make ready or act according to his will, shall receive a severe beating. But he who did not know, and did what deserved a beating, shall receive a light beating. Every one to whom much is given, of him will much be required; and of him to whom men commit much they will demand the more.

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In the 'Our Father', we pray, may your Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.

Jesus wants us to build a society here that's modeled after the loving, giving heart of the Creator. Human beings have a tendency to build societies without any reference to this loving, giving heart. We want to build societies according to our own ideas of a perfect world. And we call whatever perfect world we create utopia.

Utopia comes from the title of a book that Thomas More wrote in England in 1500 called Utopia. At that time, there were lots of social problems. Royalty lived off the people. Lots of poverty, poor health. In his book, he described utopia as an island community where there was no royalty, where everyone worked together, shared the results.

A hundred years later, another Englishman, John Locke, pushed the idea that if we want to create this perfect world, the right to private property must be enshrined in law. And then each person would be free to pursue their own dream of becoming rich using whatever they owned. Locke assumed that social institutions like the family, the church, schools, government would counter this individual drive for wealth by supporting the common good. But over the next three hundred years, the influence of the family, the church, schools, and government grew weaker and weaker, while the drive for individual rights grew more and more powerful. The sense of common purpose and public spirit is completely absent from our society today.

In its place, a ruthless individualism expressed in a market mentality has invaded our lives.

We have the illusion that we control our destiny because individual economic opportunities do exist, especially if you start with middle class advantages. The reality is that powerful economic forces affecting the lives of all of us make most of the decisions that affect our lives. And they make them on the basis of what's good for business. And we have no control over these economic forces.

Most Canadians, most Americans, most Europeans no longer believe they have any meaningful say in how their countries are run. And all of this begins with the belief that we can create a perfect society, forgetting that the people who live here are an imperfect species. This is not a mistake that philosophers and think tanks people make. We all do it every time we come up with a plan to fix something, to fix our family, our parish, our school, our club, without taking into consideration that all human beings make mistakes, they forget.

They're selfish. They're frail. So that sooner or later, we will all want to get rid of some people because they don't fit our perfect home, our perfect community, our perfect school, our perfect club.

Jesus tells a story that points out two different approaches to life. We can be wise stewards of the grace God has given us, never forgetting that we are servants.

Or we can be selfish administrators, behaving as if we were masters of our existence, using the things God has given us solely for ourselves.

If we believe we're solely in charge of our lives, soon we begin to act as if everything revolved around us, and we become tyrants. Bad administrators behave as if they were masters, not servants, and they make absolutes of themselves. We're called to reason not as someone who is the master of their existence, but as one who has received life as a gift, to rejoice in the beauty we've been given and to be collaborators in the ongoing work of creation.

When we appreciate goodness and mercy and blessings, when we consider ourselves to be children of creation, we will be shaped by the desire to be faithful to life as a gift and to nurture this sense of giftedness in everyone around us.