Written by In the novel The Brothers Karamazov, the Russian novelist Feodor Dostoyevsky tells the story of a guardian angel who wept before God because the woman in his charge had been so wicked in life that she was stuck in hell. When God asked if she had ever done anything good, the angel said she had once given an onion to a beggar.
God relented and sent the angel to find the onion for to use it to pull her out of hell. When the angel found it, he held the onion out to the woman, telling her to hold on for dear life. As she was on her way being lifted out of hell, other people stuck there grabbed her legs to hitch a ride. Then the wicked woman shouted, “It’s my onion!”, and kicked them away. With that, the onion broke and she and her companions fell into oblivion.
For the second consecutive Sunday our Gospel text features Jesus’ instructions on how to live in such a way as to be ready for the judgment that awaits us when we die. Jesus teaches that we are not to be like that selfish woman or the greedy man in last Sunday’s Gospel who planned bigger barns for a bumper harvest rather than share it with the poor. Jesus asks us, instead, not to be mean or greedy (like the woman with the onion): we are to share what we can with those who are in need. Living this way, he says (Luke 12:32-48) we will store up ‘treasure in heaven’ where – unlike our material possessions or money – it will not wear out.
And although it’s not mentioned in today’s reading, a favourite theme in St Luke’s Gospel is that when we die the poor we have helped in life will be at the gates of heaven to lift us up there.
So today we pray for the grace to give more, if we can, than an onion to the needy, and to respond as generously as we are able to the needs of others.
Michael Campion
Holy Name, Jesmond
7 August 2022
Sunday Mass: Saturday 4pm, Sunday 10am 