Pope Francis offered a reminder that people are always worth more than things, as he reflected on a Gospel that “can seem a little confusing, but isn’t.”
The pope spoke of the line from Luke’s Gospel: “I tell you, make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth, so that when it fails, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.” He offered his reflection before praying the midday Angelus with pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square.
This “dishonest wealth,” he said, is a reference to money, sometimes known as “the devil’s dung,” and to material possessions in general.
The pope explained that “wealth can lead to building walls, to division and to discrimination,” but Jesus invites us to instead use wealth in order to “make friends.”
It is “an invitation to know how to transform goods and riches into relationships, because people are worth more than things and count more than the riches we possess,” he said.
In life, effectively, it’s not those who have a lot of riches that give fruit, but those who create and maintain bonds, so many relationships, so many friendships through different “riches,” that is, through the various talents that God has given them.
The Holy Father spoke of how using wealth in this way leads to the result that Jesus indicates in the Gospel: being welcomed into eternal dwellings.
If we are capable of transforming riches into instruments of fraternity and solidarity, then not only God will welcome us into Paradise, but also those with whom we have shared, by administering well what the Lord has placed in our hands.
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And today we celebrate...