“No servant can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon” (Lk 16:13).
Jesus consistently emphasizes the priority of making God primary in our lives. Anything that moves into the slot of preeminence before God is idolatrous. Anything, even family, as we heard a few days ago. We cannot have two firsts, because either we will “hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other.” This balancing act is not an easy discipline.
It becomes especially challenging when we look at mammon, money or material wealth. Many of us seek our security in having a home, insurance policies, savings, retirement plans, market investments, none of which is bad. Setting up this security is often considered prudent. The problem is when material security becomes the foundation of our life, our fulfillment, our god.
This has certainly influenced the Church at times with movements of a prosperity gospel. The approach to a faith life that is not so much building up a relationship with our loving God and Father, but one of seeking God as a holy investor. We lock on to verses, especially from the Parable of the Sower (cf. Mark 4, Matthew 13, and Luke 8) in such a way that our primary intent in giving is to reap a financial return of ten, twenty, or a hundredfold. God certainly wants us to be good stewards, and he will indeed bless us, and wants us to be generous and cheerful with our giving, but again, if in our giving the primary intent is to receive more of our treasure, we are serving Mammon and not God.
Here are a few quotes. May we read, meditate, and pray with them as an examination of conscious in discerning if we have put Mammon or God first:
“If one of your kinsmen in any community is in need in the land which the Lord, your God, is giving you, you shall not harden your heart nor close your hand to him in his need. Instead, you shall open your hand to him and freely lend him enough to meet his need” (Deuteronomy 15:7-8).
“Render true judgment, and show compassion toward each other. Do not oppress the widow or the orphan, the alien or the poor; do not plot evil against one another in your heart” (Zechariah 7:9-10).
“For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me” (Matthew 25:35).
“When giving to the poor, you are not giving him what is yours; rather, you are paying him back what is his” (St Ambrose of Milan, 340-339).
“If each one of us took only what is necessary for his sustenance, leaving what is superfluous for the indigent, there would be no distinction of rich and poor” (St Basil of Caesarea, 330-379).
These are but a few of many. The core of our Judeo-Christian heritage is the knowledge that we have been created by the Love of God, to be loved and to love him and one another. He is to be our source, our fundamental option and beacon home. The blessing we receive, the hundredfold we seek, is to be measured in love, mercy, and generosity received and given. Pope Francis continues in this tradition when he said duirng his general audience in 2013, “that some homeless people die of cold on the streets is not news. In contrast, a ten point drop on the stock markets of some cities is a tragedy. A person dying is not news, but if the stock markets drop ten points it is a tragedy! Thus people are disposed of, as if they were trash. Consumerism has led us to become used to an excess and daily waste of food, to which, at times, we are no longer able to give a just value, which goes well beyond mere economic parameters” (Vatican Insider).
If God is our foundation, then when relationships get bumpy, our health is threatened, the market drops, we are laid off, we will not be moved because we know God in his divine providence will provide, he will be present with us through each struggle and trial. We can get up in arms when there is the thought that someone will attempt to petition to take away the name of God from our money. Yet, how are we living our life day to day? Were there someone observing us objectively, would they say about us, “There goes someone that lives their life believing: In Gold we Trust or In God we Trust?”
Photo accessed from: http://www.jonathan-quek.com/in-god-we-trust/
Link for quote from Pope Francis found in Vatican Insider:
Link for today’s Mass readings:
http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/111117.cfm
Spiritual Stepping Stones 