Our Moral Responsibility for The Other

No man will be excluded from heaven because he lawfully possessed some of this world's wealth. But a man will exclude himself from eternal happiness if he lets this world's wealth possess him to the exclusion of God.

A reflection from Father Tudgay for the Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time.

“You do you”, the saying goes. Often enough, those words are spoken with a tone of permissiveness or licentiousness, one to the other. The subtext, however, can imply that one doesn’t want to bear the consequences of the actions of the other. “You do you” is a way of absenting ourselves from the fallout of the choices of another. While boundaries are clearly important in any relationship, the risk of isolation runs deep in our culture. As disciples of Jesus Christ, we have an interpersonal responsibility, one to the other, to be a source of grace and light in the lives of others. Solidarity is the Christian disposition that keeps us accountable to the well-being of the other, especially to the poor and to those who are isolated and suffering. 

The parable of the man who stored up all of treasures in the Gospel passage this weekend speaks to the fear that arises from a lack of trust in the providence of God. This fear, which can come from a variety of factors, is the basis of temptations toward greed, which is a type of fear of not having enough. In this sense, the greed isn’t the fundamental cause of the “hoarding” that we see with the person in the Gospel, but greed is merely the symptom of a deeper fear of poverty, abandonment, or isolation. The trust in God’s providence that you and I are invited to embrace remedies this fear and has an immediate effect in our lives. The result of deeper trust? Deeper generosity! 

Saint Paul’s letter to the Colossians in our second reading invites to always “seek what is above”, where the source of God’s strength, grace, and power is encountered in our daily lives. This fixation on seeking and seeing Christ in all things disposes the human heart to move beyond the temptation of “You do You” and asks, “What can I do for you”? By always seeking the “above” here on Earth, we discover the presence of Jesus Christ in ourselves and in others, leading us out of isolation to be a source of grace for one another.