“He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’ Luke 16:27-28
“It may seem an extraordinary thing to do, to sell all you have and give the proceeds to the poor. Actually, however, it is a natural action. It is like going back to creation, to our own birth itself.
When Job had lost all his possessions he did not think what had happened to him was anything abnormal. He soothed the pain by saying: ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return’ [Job 1:21]. As if to say: ‘All that has happened is that I find myself as I was when I was born.’
It is natural for human beings to be deprived of everything, to end up with nothing but their own bodies.
But it becomes much greater than something simply natural if someone does it voluntarily, for the love of God. It is like death. To die for the love of God is martyrdom.
When Adam and Eve were created they did not possess anything. Not only had they no wealth: they did not even have clothes. They were like a child which comes naked from its mothers womb. They were in the position Job describes. They were as Paul has said: ‘We brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world’ [1 Tim. 6:7].
Let people look at their beginning and their end, and try to be like that also during the time in between.”
Philoxenus of Mabbug in Homily 9, 338ff. (SC44, p.301ff) in Drinking from the Hidden Fountain: A Patristic Breviary, Ancient Wisdom for Today’s World, ed. by Thomas Spidlik (Kalamazoo: Cistercian, 1994) 306-307.
What will be said of “the time in between” your birth and death? Each of us is writing a story related to our living, giving, serving, and loving.
Will it be said that you traveled light through life and stored up much in heaven? You will have provisioned yourself prudently for endless enjoyment.
Or, will you follow the pattern of the world which is materialism with miserly giving? Such people will likely end up in eternal regret like the rich man in today’s Scripture.
It’s not that our handling of money in “the time in between” secures our eternal destiny. It’s actually bigger than that. It reveals the path we have chosen in our hearts.