Sunday, July 31 : Saint Basil

“You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?” This man’s behavior is more to be mocked than eternal punishment is severe. Indeed, what sort of plans are jostling within the mind of this man who is going to be taken from this world so soon? “I will pull down my barns and build bigger ones.” Now, I would gladly say to him: Well done! For the barns of unrighteousness are only worth pulling down. Destroy from top to bottom what you have built up dishonestly. Let those wheat stocks of yours, that have never brought comfort to anyone, disintegrate. Do away with all the buildings that shelter your greed, pull down their roofs, overturn their walls, expose the mouldering grain to the sun, bring the wealth imprisoned within it out of its prison (…). “I shall tear down my barns and build even larger ones.” Once you have filled these up in their turn, then what are you going to do ? Will you pull them down to rebuild others once more ? Is this a worse madness than to be endlessly tormented: to build tenaciously and at once pull down? If that is what you want, you have the houses of the poor for your barns. “Build up treasure in heaven” : what is stored there “neither moth nor decay destroy, nor thieves break in and steal” (Mt 6:20).
Roman Catholic Ordinary Calendar – rosary,team