What will remain at the end of all our efforts and fatigue?
The author of the first reading speaks from sad experience: human possessions and efforts alone do not guarantee happiness. The author does not offer us a solution, but he poses the problem to us in a very challenging way.
For his part, the Gospel of Luke, since Jesus decides to go up to Jerusalem (Lk 9,51), all that journey towards the holy city becomes a path of instruction more focused on his disciples. He gives them examples from daily life, tells them parables and every circumstance in his interaction with the people who come to listen to him becomes an opportunity to instruct them. Such is the case of the text that we have read today, when someone asked him to mediate in the distribution of an inheritance between brothers. Jesus did not want to intervene in that matter, because it was something that he did not have to solve. But this gave him cause to warn his disciples about the danger of greed and ambition. Because neither happiness nor life itself are guaranteed just by having many goods.
The quality of our life does not depend only on material things or economic wealth, but rather on the measure of our love for the Lord and for our brothers. What profit does a man derive from all his toils and toils under the sun?
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