‘What shall I do, for I do not have space to store my harvest?’ When St. Basil, one of the Fathers of the Church reflects on this passage from a parable of Jesus he says that the rich man should not have thought of storing is excess harvest in bigger barns but in the bellies of the poor. He warns that accumulating more stuff than you actually need creates a spirit of greed contrary to the gospel. He uses even starker terms: if you have two coats and your brother has none, you are stealing from your brother. In saying this he is reflecting Luke 3:11. “Let the man with two coats give to him who has none. The man who has food should do the same.”
