Sunday 31th July 2022 Reflection By Fr. Didier Hadonou

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ there is a say which always makes me to reflect on the importance we give to materials in life. Thus goes the say: “we come to life with nothing, we life to fight for everything and we die without going with nothing.” This say summarizes everything we hear about the readings today especially the first reading and the gospel. We live in the world today where we give too much importance to what at the end may not lead us to God our creature since the aim of human is to go back to God his creator. We mislead ourselves in our desire of having and this makes us to miss our destination. We use to say that if we don’t know where we are going to, at least we know where we are coming from. We all say and sing everyday that we come from God and while singing “coming home” I guess we are saying coming to God. But the fundamental question raised by the readings today is to see if in-between our birth and death we are on the track that leads to God. Today we think that the important thing to have for our happiness is material and we do make all the sacrifice to have it. We have turned money into God and because of money, we have turned ourselves into something else.

Because of money, we are ready to kill our fellow human beings. I was listening few months ago the testimony of a woman invited to join a group or I will say our so called njangi meeting. The lady was first of all surprised that in this meeting, you collect more money than you put. When it was her turn to collect the money, the members of the group asked her to cook “coundrey” meal from west Cameroon if may say so. So the lady cooked that “coundrey” as it is traditionally cooked, plantain and goat meat. When the members of the meeting came they got angry with her because they were expecting her to sacrifice her mother and one of her children. The members of the group were all women and I was so surprised with their attitude because in my mind, I use to say that there can only be men who are able to scarify their children because they have never experienced labor pain and how it looks like to carry a child for nine months.

Not only people are ready to scarify their fellow human being in other to get money but the other way to get money is to exploit our brothers and sisters who are less privileged compared to us. Many prophets had spoken about how the rich exploit the poor and called for conversion but we still leave as if we are right in exploiting and doing whatever we want just to increase our goods: “I brought upon you such upheaval as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah: you were like a brand plucked from the fire; yet you returned not to me says the Lord. So now I will deal with you in my own way O Israel! And since, I will deal thus with you, prepare to meet your God.” (Amos4: 11-12)

In our families, we only assume our duties as successors when there are lands to sell or money to collect from the tenants. Cardinal Sarah from Guinea-Conakry once said, nowadays in our church, we hardly talk about paradise or hell. We Catholics seem to have fallen in the temptation of these new churches who only preach the Gospel of prosperity. Today it is an opportunity to reflect on the question Jesus put to his auditors in the gospel which is proposed to us: “fool! This night your soul is required of you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich towards God.”

Being rich in God is accepting that the most important thing to run after is God. In the prayer Jesus taught his disciples and which we heard last Sunday, we can see that God is a provider and a protector. If we have Him, we have all we need. And in the biblical tradition, the poor are not those who do not have. The poor are those who count on God alone and this is what the readings are calling us today to be. Let material not become the god we worship and money not use us. We are the one to use money and when it is the contrary that happens, life loses its meaning.

 

 Fr. Didier Hadonou, sm