A revealing question to ask of any group: What Matters? In this gathering of people, what counts more and what counts less? What is your measure of success?

Depending on the groups and their settings, answers would vary.

For a certain segment in any society, a quick answer would be money – and what money can buy. The most admired and envied would be the richest ones, the ones who have accumulated the largest treasure.  What matters here? Financial clout.

Jesus is onto this mentality as he tells his parable of the rich man whose whole focus is safely putting away all he’s earned and then multiplying it.

Jesus isn’t saying prosperity is inherently wrong; the issue is when it becomes life’s top priority. Anything below affluence barely counts.

For another group it could be fame and prestige, even if sought at the expense of truthfulness and justice. Here, those outward appearances outrank all else and count the most.

In still other circles, control and domination override everything else – always having to be in charge and to be the boss.

Concluding his parable, Jesus unambiguously declares that the kind of richness which counts the most is “Richness in what matters to God, his Father.” And Jesus, speaking as God’s person in the world, lays out a whole hierarchy of what matters more, what counts less, and what doesn’t matter at all.

For instance,

• Truth matters, that which is honest and above board and without deception. Jesus preaches, lives and dies for this truthfulness.
• Compassion for others is another. Helping those in need, paying attention to the overlooked and the abandoned, having an eye for the orphan and the widow, standing up for those unjustly treated.
• And topping it all is love
  • love for the neighbor that goes beyond just words and translates into helpful action
  • love for oneself, not in a selfish ego-centric way, but love of self that flows from the recognition of the God-given goodness at each person’s core, including the core of one’s own very self.
  • love for God, reverence and respect for all that God loves and values — not just the People of God but all of God’s creation.

Today’s parable is a vivid and pointed lesson in what counts most in the Kingdom of God, what matters less, and what hardly tips its scale of values. By Jesus’ often repeated and personally lived testimony, what reckons is: that we be rich in what that matters to God.

In his own way, St. Vincent underscores the point of this parable.

The detachment God gives you from the things of this world is more valuable than all its precious assets.

(Volume: 8 | Page#: 111) To Jacques Pesnelle, 29 August, 1659 added on 6/28/2011