August 3, 2025

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

In his masterpiece The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis writes a correspondence between Screwtape, a senior demon, and his nephew Wormwood, a junior demon. Screwtape gives strategies and suggestions for tempting a particular man. One strategy he suggests is to try to focus the man’s attention on anything other than what is eternal. In Letter #15, Lewis has Screwtape write this:

“Our business is to get them away from the eternal, and from the Present. With this in view, we sometimes tempt a human (say a widow or a scholar) to live in the Past. But this is of limited value, for they have some real knowledge of the Past and it has a determinate nature and, to that extent, resembles eternity. It is far better to make them live in the Future. Biological necessity makes all their passions point in that direction already, so that thought about the Future inflames hope and fear. Also, it is unknown to them, so that in making them think about it we make them think of unrealities. In a word, the Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most completely temporal part of time – for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays. Hence the encouragement we have given to all those schemes of thought such as Creative Evolution, Scientific Humanism, or Communism, which fix men’s affections on the Future, on the very core of temporality. Hence, nearly all the vices are rooted in the future. Gratitude looks to the past and love to the present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.”

The Gospel today begins with what seems a simple enough request. “Tell my brother to share.” In what follows, our Lord offers a corrective both to the one who asks, and to the one who will not share. “Take care to guard against all greed.” First, we see the greed of the one who asks. His brother has an inheritance and he wants a piece. He is pinning his hopes for the future on the possibility of getting something that belongs to someone else. If only I had what he has, I would be fine. This keeping-up-with-the-Joneses type of thinking is always dangerous for us. Jesus is not here to settle our estate debates, but to offer us an eternal inheritance in heaven. Perhaps the brother of this man is something like the rich man in the parable, ready to store up his treasure for his own comfort, that he might eat, drink, and be merry. St. Cyril of Alexandria writes of this rich man, “In distress and anxiety, he speaks words of poverty. He says, ‘What should I do?’…He does not raise his eyes to God…He does not cherish love for the poor…He does not sympathize with the suffering.” Jesus tells us to be rich in what matters to God, and throughout the Gospel we see that what matters to God is obedience to the commandments, love for our neighbor, mercy for the sinner, and charity for those in need.

To guard against all greed does not mean that we are not permitted to save money or prepare for the future. Even though I guard against greed, I may still worry about what is to come. But when I remember that, as Lewis writes, the future is the thing least like eternity; when I remember that Jesus calls me to store up treasure in heaven, and not to be concerned with earthly prestige, power, or wealth, I see how much better it is to raise my eyes to God, to trust, and to care for those in need. Guarding against greed, we can pray in the words of the Collect just last week: “O God, protector of those who hope in you…grant that with you as our leader and guide, we may use the good things that pass in such a way as to hold fast even now to those that ever endure.”

Peace,

Fr. Sam