Jesus told a parable about the man who after a successful harvest was deciding where to store his crop. ‘This is what I shall do: I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones.’ In the story, the man didn’t consider his mortality — that we should look at things from the perspective of eternity. When St. John Chrysostom preached on this parable he suggested that the place the rich man should have stored his crop was in the bellies of the hungry. When God has blessed us, the saint urged, we in turn should share that blessing with others. In our age the cultural tendency toward individualism has blinded us toward our responsibility to the common good, to seeing things beyond our personal perspective.
