The Memorial of Saints John de Brébeuf and Isaac Jogues, Priests and Companions
You were made alive when you were dead in transgressions and sins, In which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the children of disobedience. We also all once lived among them in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, for his great love with which he loved us, Even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved — And raised us up with him, and made us to sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, That in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus; For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, Not of works, that no one would boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before that we would walk in them.
Shout for joy to the Lord, all you lands! Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before his presence with singing.
Know that the Lord, he is God. It is he who has made us, and we are his. We are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, And into his courts with praise. Give thanks to him, and bless his name.
Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, And into his courts with praise. Give thanks to him, and bless his name. For the Lord is good. His loving kindness endures forever, His faithfulness to all generations.
One of the multitude said to him, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me."
But he said to him, "Man, who made me a judge or an arbitrator over you?" He said to them, "Beware! Keep yourselves from covetousness, for a man's life doesn't consist of the abundance of the things which he possesses."
He spoke a parable to them, saying, "The ground of a certain rich man produced abundantly. He reasoned within himself, saying, 'What will I do, because I don't have room to store my crops?' He said, 'This is what I will do. I will pull down my barns, build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. I will tell my soul, "Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years. Take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry."'
"But God said to him, 'You foolish one, tonight your soul is required of you. The things which you have prepared — whose will they be?' So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God."
Saints John de Brébeuf and Isaac Jogues were French Jesuit missionaries who came to the shores of what is now Canada and New York in the 1600s, and were tortured and killed for their faith among the Huron and Iroquois peoples — men who gave everything, holding nothing back.
That total self-giving stands in sharp contrast to the figure Jesus describes in this parable — a man who has everything and holds it all tightly, building bigger barns, planning longer retirements, speaking only to himself. Notice how the rich man's inner monologue contains no other voices. No neighbor, no God, no stranger at the gate. Just *soul, you have many goods.* The isolation of greed is one of its quieter cruelties.
Paul's letter to the Ephesians reframes the whole picture. We didn't earn our way into life — we were dead, and God, rich in mercy, made us alive. The movement here is from grasping to receiving, from self-made to gift-made. We are, Paul says, God's *workmanship* — a word that carries the sense of a poem, a crafted thing. We didn't build ourselves. We were built for something.
And that something is the good works God prepared for us to walk in. Not to stockpile. Not to secure. To walk in — daily, ordinary, often unnoticed.
Brébeuf and Jogues understood this in a radical way. But the invitation extends to ordinary Wednesday afternoons too, to the small choices about whether we hoard our time, our attention, our resources, or whether we let them move through us toward others.
The barn is always an option. So is the open hand.
Consider today: Where are we building bigger barns — not just with money, but with time, energy, or affection? What does it mean to be "rich toward God" in the next twenty-four hours? And what might it look like to receive our own lives as gift rather than achievement?