Someone in the crowd said to Jesus:
“Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me” Lk 12: 13
Someone, impersonal, an individual, without name.
What such a strange question! Why this question to Jesus and not to a judge or a lawyer? What is behind losing his inheritance? Fear to lack something? Fear not to have what he deserves? Fear to appear weak before his brother? Fear of what we do not know but surely fear of something. We know this feeling where we are confused, a little lost or trying to cling to what we think, can reassure us.
Jesus is right not to enter in this triangulation, but he goes further. He talks of cupidity: it is good to gather when there is a state of shortage but quickly it can change and become an obsession to accumulate. “Just in case” do we justify this.
And St Benedict is firm to remind us that we do not possess anything.
We know all this but there is more: and our man is maybe looking for more than an inheritance.
Jesus seems to radiate another wisdom.
Jesus, fully human did not have inheritance. He is the Only begotten Son.
And fully divine, everything is his. He does not divide it; no need to divide because all of us and each one receives the full of it. Let us be aware of this wonder that Christ is all and in all.
We are all heirs of his kingdom. The sign is the Eucharist: the self-giving of the Father’s Son inviting our self-giving and making us participants of his divine life. This is our inheritance. It is Jesus’ last prayer:
They may all be one, as you, Father is in me and I in you, that they may also be in us.
Sr. Claire Bouttin, Superior
18th Sunday of Ordinary Time Year C
