October 19, 2026
Monday of the twenty-ninth week in ordinary time
Memorial of
Saints John de Brébeuf and Isaac Jogues, Priests, and Companions, Martyrs
[In the Dioceses of the United States]
Lectionary: 473
Reading 1
Brothers and sisters:
You were dead in your transgressions and sins
in which you once lived following the age of this world,
following the ruler of the power of the air,
the spirit that is now at work in the disobedient.
All of us once lived among them in the desires of our flesh,
following the wishes of the flesh and the impulses,
and we were by nature children of wrath, like the rest.
But God, who is rich in mercy,
because of the great love he had for us,
even when we were dead in our transgressions,
brought us to life with Christ (by grace you have been saved),
raised us up with him,
and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus,
that in the ages to come
he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace
in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
For by grace you have been saved through faith,
and this is not from you; it is the gift of God;
it is not from works, so no one may boast.
For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for good works
that God has prepared in advance,
that we should live in them.
Responsorial Psalm
R. (3b) The Lord made us, we belong to him.
Sing joyfully to the LORD all you lands;
serve the LORD with gladness;
come before him with joyful song.
R. The Lord made us, we belong to him.
Know that the LORD is God;
he made us, his we are;
his people, the flock he tends.
R. The Lord made us, we belong to him.
Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
his courts with praise.
R. The Lord made us, we belong to him.
Give thanks to him; bless his name, for he is good:
the LORD, whose kindness endures forever,
and his faithfulness, to all generations.
R. The Lord made us, we belong to him.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Blessed are the poor in spirit;
for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Someone in the crowd said to Jesus,
“Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me.”
He replied to him,
“Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?”
Then he said to the crowd,
“Take care to guard against all greed,
for though one may be rich,
one’s life does not consist of possessions.”
Then he told them a parable.
“There was a rich man whose land produced a bountiful harvest.
He asked himself, ‘What shall I do,
for I do not have space to store my harvest?’
And he said, ‘This is what I shall do:
I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones.
There I shall store all my grain and other goods
and I shall say to myself, “Now as for you,
you have so many good things stored up for many years,
rest, eat, drink, be merry!”’
But God said to him,
‘You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you;
and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?’
Thus will it be for the one who stores up treasure for himself
but is not rich in what matters to God.”
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/101926.cfm
Commentary on
Ephesians 2:1-10
We now enter the second chapter of the Letter in
which Paul speaks of how the Gentiles together with the Jews have been called
to share the gift of God’s love, showered on them with total generosity and not
because of any merit on their part. Here Paul speaks about what God has done
through Christ for both Jews (of which he himself is a representative) and
Gentiles (who form the majority of his readers).
He begins by addressing the Gentiles (“you”), who
in the past lived lives both morally and spiritually far from God:
You were dead through the trespasses and sins
in which you once walked, following the course of this world…
This is a description of their past moral and
spiritual condition, separated from the life of God. They were under the
influence of the “ruler of the power of the air”. The air was believed to be
the dwelling place of Satan and all the demons, and this implies they belonged
to a higher world than this earth.
But he says “all of us”, meaning Paul
and all his fellow-Jews, were not without fault either. They too lived
“doing the will of flesh and senses”, ruled only by their own physical desires
and their own ways of thinking. The Jews were as worthy of God’s punishment as
the rest of the world. (One has only to read the prophets to see how severely
they condemned the behaviour of their own people.)
However, “we” (now indicating all, both Jews and
Gentiles), though dead through our sin, have experienced God’s mercy and
compassion and are overwhelmed by the outpouring of God’s love:
…when we were dead through our trespasses, [God]
made us alive together with Christ…and seated us with him in the heavenly
places in Christ Jesus…
Paul expresses this truth more fully in his Letter
to the Romans (see Rom 6:1-10).
Notice the past tense of “seated us with him”.
Already in Christ we are enjoying the life that will never end and for which
the death of the body is a mere transition. Treating the eschatological reality
as already existing is a characteristic of Paul’s letters written from prison.
This way of thinking is also to be found in John’s Gospel.
In the final paragraph, Paul emphasises how what
God has done for us in Christ Jesus is a sign of the immense and forgiving love
of God which is given to people everywhere as purely free gift. It is in no way
earned by what we do:
For by grace you have been saved through faith,
and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God…
The saving is the gift of God; the faith is the
trusting surrender of openness to that love. Our standing with God is:
…not the result of works, so that no one may
boast.
Access to this love comes through faith, the
unconditional surrender in trust of our whole selves to our loving God. It is
not by any meritorious acts of our own, as believed by those who base salvation
on the meticulous observance of a law or a moral code—as if such observance
bound God to hand out rewards for good behaviour.
On the contrary:
…we are what he has made us…
Everything that we have become, every good and
beautiful thing we do is simply God at work in us and through us. We are:
…created in Christ Jesus for good works, which
God prepared beforehand so that we may walk in them.
But our doing so depends entirely on our openness
to his guidance and help.
Let us then today say our unconditional ‘Yes’ to
Jesus in faith. Only in this way can the deepest longings of our hearts be
realised.
Commentary on Luke
12:13-21
We move on now in Luke to more immediate concerns
of the Christian life. Today’s topic is about the perennial question of money,
or rather, the love of money. A man in the crowd said to Jesus:
Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family
inheritance with me.
According to Mosaic Law, the general rule was that
an elder son received double that of a younger son. If there was a dispute, it
was usually settled by a rabbi, which is presumably why the man approached
Jesus. It was the kind of problem in which Jesus was not remotely interested,
and he refused to get involved. One wonders how interested Jesus is when we
make novenas to win lotteries or when we ask God to help us get our hands on
the wealth of a rich and elderly aunt!!
Jesus now takes the opportunity to make some
general remarks “against all kinds of greed”. A man may be wealthy, he says,
but his possessions do not guarantee him life. Life comes with freedom, peace
and happiness. Money cannot buy these things.
There is no evidence that rich people enjoy more
freedom, peace or happiness, although many of us are inclined to think they do
and envy them. Their marriages do not last any longer. They do not bring up
better children. They do not necessarily enjoy better health.
At this point Jesus speaks a telling parable. A
farmer who is already rich has a bumper harvest. It is so big that he has to
pull down his existing barns to build larger ones. When all that is done, he
smugly says to himself: “My boy, you have blessings in reserve for years to
come. Relax! Put your feet up. Eat heartily, drink well. Enjoy yourself.” But
Jesus tells them, that very night:
God said to him [i.e. the farmer], ‘You
fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you’.
What happens now to all his piled-up wealth? Yes,
it is all left behind. “You can’t take it with you.” “How much did he leave?”
was asked about a billionaire who died. “Every cent,” was the reply. When the
farmer met his God, what had he brought with him? Little or nothing. When St
Teresa of Calcutta (Mother Teresa) died, how much do you think she brought? One
feels she brought a great deal. And she certainly left behind a great deal to
enrich the lives of many.
What is my attitude to money and wealth? If I were
to die now, what could I bring with me to present to God? And what will I leave
behind, apart from cash and possessions? All of us can be rich in God’s sight,
and it does not require any money. Someone has said that the really rich are
not those who have the most, but those whose needs are the least (see Luke
12:22-34, where Jesus spells out a recipe for a life free from anxiety—the life
which he himself lived).
And what we need most is the ability to reach out
in love, the love that builds and makes life better for others. Think of what
good parents leave behind in children whose lives are dedicated to making this
world a better place—or teachers who have helped young people to devote
themselves to service of the community. What we need is to live in communities
where people look after each other. That would be a situation where, because
everyone gives, everyone gets.
https://sacredspace.com/commentary
Monday, October 19, 2026
Ordinary Time
Opening Prayer
Almighty and everlasting God, our
source of power and inspiration, give us strength and joy in serving you as
followers of Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one
God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Gospel Reading - Luke 12: 13-21
A man in
the crowd said to him, 'Master, tell my brother to give me a share of our
inheritance.' He said to him, 'My friend, who appointed me your judge, or the
arbitrator of your claims?' Then He said to them, 'Watch, and be on your guard
against avarice of any kind, for life does not consist in possessions, even
when someone has more than he needs.'
Then
He told them a parable, 'There was once a rich man who, having had a good
harvest from his land, thought to himself, "What am I to do? I have not
enough room to store my crops." Then he said, "This is what I will
do: I will pull down my barns and build bigger ones, and store all my grain and
my goods in them, and I will say to my soul: My soul, you have plenty of good
things laid by for many years to come; take things easy, eat, drink, have a
good time." But God said to him, "Fool! This very night the demand
will be made for your soul; and this hoard of yours, whose will it be
then?" So it is when someone stores up treasure for himself instead of
becoming rich in the sight of God.'
Reflection
The episode in today’s gospel is
found only in the Gospel of Luke and does not have a parallel in the other
Gospels. It forms part of the long description of Jesus’ trip from Galilee to
Jerusalem (Lk 9: 51 to 19: 28) in which Luke places most of the information
which he collected concerning Jesus which is not found in the other three
Gospels (cf. Lk 1: 2-3). The gospel today gives the response of Jesus to the
person who asked Him to be the mediator in the distribution of an inheritance.
•
Luke 12: 13: A request to distribute an
inheritance. “One from the crowd told Jesus: Master, tell my brother to give me
a share of our inheritance.” Up until today, the distribution of an inheritance
among the living relatives is always a delicate question and, many times, it is
the occasion of disputes and of tensions without end. At that time, the
inheritance also had something to do with the identity of the person (1 K 21:
1-3) and with survival (Num 27: 1-11; 36: 112). The greatest problem was the
distribution of the land among the sons of the deceased father. If the family
was numerous, there was a danger that the inheritance would be divided into
small pieces of land which would not have guaranteed survival of all. For this
reason, in order to avoid the breaking up or disintegration of the inheritance
and to carry on the name of the family, the firstborn or eldest received double
of what the other sons received (Dt 21: 17. cf. 2Rs 2: 11).
Luke
12: 14-15: Response of Jesus: attention to greed, to cupidity. “Jesus answers:
My friend, who appointed me your judge or the arbitrator of your claims?” In
the response of Jesus appears the knowledge which He has of His mission. Jesus
does not feel sent by God to respond to the request to be arbitrator between
the relatives who argue or quarrel among themselves concerning the distribution
of the inheritance. But the request of this man leads Him to the mission to
orientate persons, because “Watch, and be on your guard against avarice of any
kind, for life does not consist in possessions, even when someone has more than
he needs.” It was part of his mission to clarify the sense of life. The value
of life does not consist in having many things, but rather in being rich for
God (Lk 12: 21). Because when gain occupies the heart, it does not know how to
distribute the inheritance in an equitable way and with peace.
•
Luke 12: 16-19: The parable that makes one think
on the sense of life. Then Jesus told a parable to help persons to reflect on
the sense of life: “There was a rich man who having had a good harvest from his
land, thought to himself: What am I to do? I have not enough room to store my
crops.” The rich man was very obsessed by the concern of his goods which had
increased in an unforeseen way because of an abundant harvest. He thinks only
of accumulating in order to guarantee a life without worries. He says: This is
what I will do. I will pull down my barns and build bigger ones, and store all
my grain and my goods in them and I will say to my soul: My soul, now you have
plenty of good things laid for many years to come, take things easy, eat,
drink, have a good time.”
•
Luke 12: 20: The first conclusion of the
parable. “But God said to him: ‘Fool! This very night the demand will be made
for your soul, and this hoard of yours, whose will it be then?” So it is when
someone stores up treasures for himself instead of becoming rich in the sight
of God.” Death is an important key to discovering the true sense of life. It
makes all things relative, because it shows what perishes and what remains.
Anyone who only seeks to have, and forgets to be, loses everything at the hour
of death. Here we have a thought which appears very frequently in the books of
wisdom: Why accumulate great quantities of goods in this life if you do not
know what will become of themand if you do not know what the heirs will do with
what you will leave them. (Qo 2: 12, 18-19, 21).
•
Luke 12: 21: second conclusion of the parable.
“So it is with someone who stores up treasures for himself instead of becoming
rich in the sight of God.” How can one become rich for God? Jesus gives several
suggestions and advice: Anyone who wants to be first, let him be last (Mt 20:
27; Mk 9: 35; 10: 44); it is better to give than to receive (Ac 20: 35); the
greatest is the smallest (Mt 18: 4; 23: 11; Lk 9: 48) he/she who loses his/her
life will save it (Mt 10: 39; 16: 25; Mk 8: 35; Lk 9: 24).
Personal Questions
The
man asked Jesus to help Him in the distribution of his inheritance. And you,
what do you ask Jesus in your prayer?
• Consumerism creates needs
and awakens in us the desire of gaining. What do you do so as not to be a
victim of gain brought about by consumerism?
Concluding Prayer
Acclaim Yahweh, all
the earth, serve Yahweh with gladness, come into his presence with songs of
joy! (Ps 100: 1-2)
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