Monday, October 19, 2026
Monday of the Twenty-ninth week in Ordinary Time
Luke 12:13-21
Listen to the whole reading — MP3
First reading
Ephesians 2:1-10
You were made alive when you were dead in transgressions and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the children of disobedience; among whom we also all once lived in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, for his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with him, and made us to sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus; for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, that no one would boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before that we would walk in them.
Responsorial psalm
Psalms 100:1,2,3,4
Shout for joy to the Lord, all you lands! Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before his presence with singing. Know that the Lord, he is God. It is he who has made us, and we are his. We are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, into his courts with praise. Give thanks to him, and bless his name.
Gospel
Luke 12:13-21
One of the multitude said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” But he said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or an arbitrator over you?” He said to them, “Beware! Keep yourselves from covetousness, for a man’s life doesn’t consist of the abundance of the things which he possesses.” He spoke a parable to them, saying, “The ground of a certain rich man produced abundantly. He reasoned within himself, saying, ‘What will I do, because I don’t have room to store my crops?’ He said, ‘This is what I will do. I will pull down my barns, and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. I will tell my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years. Take your ease, eat, drink, be merry.”’ “But God said to him, ‘You foolish one, tonight your soul is required of you. The things which you have prepared—whose will they be?’ So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.”
Lectio
There is a quiet argument at the heart of today's readings, and it is an argument about ownership. Paul insists, almost breathlessly, that everything worth having has been given: we were dead, and were made alive; we did nothing, and were raised; by grace you have been saved, and that not of yourselves. He seems anxious to leave us no room to boast, as if boasting were the great danger of the spiritual life. And perhaps it is. The rich man in the Gospel is not a monster. He is simply a man who has forgotten that his life was ever a gift. He speaks to himself in a closed circle — *I will pull down my barns, I will build, I will store, I will tell my soul* — and God interrupts that circle with a single terrible question about whose the grain will really be.
What undoes the rich man is not that he had much, but that he thought it was his. He never once looked up. The psalm names what he could not see: *it is he who has made us, and we are his.* We are not our own workmanship. Paul says the same — *we are his workmanship* — and there is enormous relief in that, if we can hear it. To belong to God rather than to yourself is not a diminishment; it is the end of the exhausting project of self-storage, the frantic building of bigger barns against a future you cannot control anyway.
The invitation, then, is not to give everything away in a panic, but to become, in Paul's lovely phrase, *rich toward God* — to hold what you have with an open hand, knowing it was lent, knowing your soul may be asked for tonight, and finding in that not fear but a strange freedom.
What is the "bigger barn" you are quietly building right now — the thing you are storing up so that one day your soul can finally take its ease — and what would it mean to admit that day may never come the way you imagine?
When did you last speak to yourself in a closed circle of *I* — planning, worrying, deciding — without once looking up to the One whose you are, and what conversation are you avoiding by staying inside that circle?
Saint of the day
Sts. Isaac Jogues, John de Brébeuf and Companions - Memorial
Ora reads this aloud, every morning, free. Ora