Homily from Father Randy Koenigsknecht
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In this week’s homily, Father Randy compares the warning signs on farm equipment to the caution signs in Scripture about wealth. He explains how God doesn’t condemn riches themselves, but warns us against complacency and self-absorption. True discipleship calls us to compassion — to let our hearts be moved by the suffering of others and to live with generosity.
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Father Randy: Growing up on the farm, I quickly got used to working with and just being around heavy machinery and all the equipment that we use that makes farming possible. Once I started seminary, I would occasionally bring some of my friends and classmates out to visit the farm, and I would always give them a tour of things, show them all the large machinery, tell them what it all does and how we use it and all that stuff. But what I found interesting is that without fail, we
Father Randy: someone would point out a feature on pretty much all the machines, all the equipment, that I stopped noticing a long time ago. I’d just seen it too often. That feature was that on every single piece of equipment, there are caution signs pretty much all over the place, on just about every part. If it does have a shield on it, it’s got a sign on it, and if you take the shield off, there’s another sign underneath the shield. So these signs are like a bright color, and they always,
Father Randy: depict, you know, cartoonishly, if not graphically, what’s going to happen to you if you’re not careful. You know, if you stick your hand or doesn’t belong, you have loose clothing, all that stuff. Obviously, the signs worked. I, all my family members, we got all our fingers and toes and stuff. But the warning signs, they’re not there to, like, convince us that we shouldn’t have the equipment, that we shouldn’t use it. They’re not there to convince us just to get rid of it all.
Father Randy: They’re there to give us directions, to give us limits, so we can use it for its intended purpose without getting hurt. Heavy equipment’s not somehow like evil in itself. You know, it just needs to be used intentionally, cautiously, because the danger is real. So in a similar way, the readings today, they’re not meant to scare us away from wealth or riches. They shouldn’t lead us to believe that being rich just automatically makes someone evil. No, what the readings are doing is they’re putting up caution signs.
Father Randy: It reminds us that we need to be intentional about how we use and manage wealth, lest we fall into the most common and preventable pitfalls. These warnings, they’re not exactly subtle. Sometimes the prophets and Jesus, they can, you know, leave things up to us to interpret. We have to, you know, delve deeply to see the point he’s trying to make. This case, these readings, they’re pretty clear.
Father Randy: The prophet Amos, he begins just dramatically like crying out, woe to the complacent in Zion. Those stretched comfortably on their couches, eating choice foods and drinking rich wine. Sounds like a pretty good life. Now it may be tempted to just kind of stop with that point and like applaud Amos for, you know, taking the rich down a peg, but that’s not the point he’s trying to make. It’s the next line that really gives us the real problem. And that is, they are not made ill by the collapse of Joseph.
Father Randy: The problem is not that they are wealthy. It’s not that they have nice couches and good food to eat. The problem is that they are ignoring the suffering and death of their brothers living in northern Israel. You may recall the land of Israel, ancient Israel, was divided among the 12 tribes. Another name for all those tribes dwelling in the northern part was Joseph.
Father Randy: And at the time of Amos, those northern tribes are being invaded. They’re being sent into exile by the Assyrian armies. And in fact, they would soon cease to exist, never to return. It’s a great tragedy. And yet these wealthy people in Jerusalem that Amos is speaking to cannot be bothered to care. They’re so caught up in what they’re doing that they don’t care about what happens to their brothers and sisters, their own kinsmen. The situation in the gospel is much the same.
Father Randy: Yet instead of the injustice being kind of global, further out in the world, it’s right on the rich man’s doorstep, right in front of him. This rich man he’s described in near royal terms, clothed in purple, dining on rich food not just occasionally but every night. You can get no stronger contrast between him, the rich man, than Lazarus, who is poor. Lazarus is the very image of someone who is so desperate that
Father Randy: that effectively his dignity has been taken away from him. His body is broken with sickness. And he would have gladly thanked the rich man for letting him eat the scraps off the floor. Imagine thanking him for letting him eat off his floor. Both die. They’re sent off their respective ends, one to joy, the other to torment. And it’s here that the attitude of the rich man that led him to this place is most fully revealed.
Father Randy: Because even now as he is tormented for his lack of love, his lack of compassion in his earthly life, he still calls out for Lazarus to be sent over to cool him with water and then for him to be sent to go to his brothers. To this rich man, Lazarus is still the same person. He’s a nobody. Someone who could be ordered around for his benefit and then be forgotten again. As that rich man was during his earthly life, he still is in eternal life.
Father Randy: He was and will be self-absorbed, focused only on himself, those within his circle, and incapable of seeing even now the humanity, the dignity of that man who was once poor and broken on his doorstep. That’s the experience of hell right there in that man’s life. So we may at times justifiably just kind of wonder and ask,
Father Randy: Why Jesus spends so much time focusing on warning the rich. Why is it a point that he keeps coming back to over and over again? So much of scripture has these warnings. It places so many caution signs around wealth. The simple answer to why that is, is that we need to hear it. We need to hear it often because it is so easy to fall into. And time and time again, people fall into it. Growing up, all those signs and all of our equipment…
Father Randy: They were there because people kept getting hurt. And less people got hurt when they were properly warned. And I know that for a fact, the difference between my generation and my dad’s. You can see it physically in their hands and other things. Jesus, he’s saying these things to us over and over again so that we would remember them. That we would live with greater intentionality because of what we’ve been given. For those who have much, the answer is generally not to just get rid of all that you have.
Father Randy: Although some people are called to that. That was the life of St. Francis. A rich man called to give away all, to live as a beggar for the Lord. Some people are called to that. For most of us, the answer is different. The answer is really an expansion of heart. Our readings make it clear. You know, the common pitfall the rich are falling into, it’s social complacency, self-absorption. That leads them to pass over the suffering of their neighbor, and to give away all.
Father Randy: and makes them unwilling to be moved by them, moved by their suffering enough to actually take action. But Scripture presents with us a remedy, something that we can do to overcome that, to be sure that we’re following the caution signs. And it’s a practice that all of us, and especially those with much, can take on. And that practice becomes your pain. This is an experience that parents know well.
Father Randy: When your kid is hurting, you feel it. I know it from my own mom, from hearing her talk about various things, what makes her stay up late at night. It’s us. It’s the kids. So compassion, it’s not limited by personal judgment. It’s not limited by rationalizations. We can know that the other person, that their suffering is their own fault, that they chose it, but we still can be moved by it. This is the way that God loves us, and it’s the way that we are called to love as well.
Father Randy: It’s an impossible task on our own, apart from the help of God. Left to ourselves, we become jaded. We slowly close off our hearts, numbing ourselves to the suffering of those around us because there is so much of it. And so it’s only through grace, it’s only through this constant contact with Jesus that our hearts can remain soft and open like his. It’s only when we’re with him that we can learn from him. We can learn to live like he did.
Father Randy: Compassion is not something that we’re ever going to practice perfectly, you know, during our time on earth. As I said, there’s so many people in our world who are suffering, but we can grow in it. We can practice loving well, loving compassionately, those immediately around us and our families, our community. There’s going to be times at church when you share an intention with your neighbor and they share their intention with you. And there’s going to be some heavy intentions that come. They may share painful things. Take that on.
Father Randy: Lean into compassion. Pray for them well during that time. You know, suffer with Jesus who suffers for them. If we want to be sure that we’re heeding the caution size Jesus is giving us today, that’s the standard. His love, his heart. We have to be willing to let our hearts be moved and be broken for what breaks his heart. He is the standard alone by which we can judge our love and our compassion. The people who did this the best, the people who really took this on, they’re the saints.
Father Randy: So to help, I think, inspire us in our mission of becoming saints, we have a short just two-minute video that was recently made for Joe Macklin about our painting project here. And it focuses specifically on the upper part, the top of the ask. And as part of it, the first half of this video just shows the sketch that he made, that he’s been working off of for inspiration and guidance. But in the second half of the video, we’ll show the actual painting, what it looks like currently right now up top.
Father Randy: As you may know, right now he’s working mainly on his bottom part. There’s still some more to go. But it should show you exactly what’s up there right now. So I hope that you take