Someone in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me."  But he said to him, "Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?"  And he said to them, "Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions."  Then he told them a parable: "The land of a rich man produced abundantly.  And he thought to himself, 'What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?'  Then he said, 'I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods.  And I will say to my soul, 'Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.'  But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?'  So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God."

This is really the only time in all the Gospels that Jesus tells us explicitly to "be on guard."  Being on guard against greed tells us that greed can sneak up on us unawares, seep into our life like a cancer, indeed take over our lives like an enemy takes over a city.  Jesus tells us "watch for it, be on guard against it, lest you begin thinking that your life is about the search for and possession of money and objects."  Remarkably Jesus tells this to a man who seems to have a legitimate legal claim against his brother; this is the occasion he uses to give us this warning.  Jesus is out among the people, teaching them, healing them, giving them light and love.  In the midst of all that this man is dwelling on possessions, what he ought to be owning by right, and wondering if Jesus the Just One will help him acquire what is rightfully his.

Jesus the Living Word permeates this entire earth, through his Eucharistic Bread, through the Scriptures, through the Church, through creation.  "I am with you always, till the end," he told us.  In the midst of this Christ-permeated planet our minds turn inward toward the sickly pursuit of more and more possessions, toward unhappiness with our wages, toward envy of those who become rich off our labors, toward the consuming need to protect what we own.  As post-resurrection people we are far worse than this random man in the crowd who sought justice from Jesus.  We know the truth of who Christ is.  We live in this world where his teaching is promulgated everywhere.  Yet our minds are still fixated on wealth and possessions.  Why?  How did this happen?  Because although we have heard Christ's warning we have not listened.  We have not been on our guard daily against our common enemy, greed.  We have not constructed a fort around our mind and heart so that greed cannot creep in unawares.

Reclaim your life.  Drive greed out through repentance, almsgiving, prayer and fasting.  Drive the snake out of your heart's garden so that the beloved may enter, take possession of you and give you real life.  Christ cannot clasp us to his heart when we clasp possessions to ours.