God or Money

Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time C-2

Entrance Antiphon Cf. Sir 36: 18 Give peace, O Lord, to those who wait for you, that your prophets be found true. Hear the prayers of your servant, and of your people Israel.

Collect Look upon us, O God, Creator and ruler of all things, and, that we may feel the working of your mercy, grant that we may serve you with all our heart. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever.

Scripture today: Amos 8:4-7; Psalm 112; 1 Timothy 2:1-8; Luke 16:1-13

Jesus said to his disciples, “A rich man had a steward who was reported to him for squandering his property. He summoned him and said, ‘What is this I hear about you? Prepare a full account of your stewardship, because you can no longer be my steward.’ The steward said to himself, ‘What shall I do, now that my master is taking the position of steward away from me? I am not strong enough to dig and I am ashamed to beg. I know what I shall do so that, when I am removed from the stewardship, they may welcome me into their homes.’ He called in his master’s debtors one by one. To the first he said, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He replied, ‘One hundred measures of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Here is your promissory note. Sit down and quickly write one for fifty.’ Then to another the steward said, ‘And you, how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘One hundred kors of wheat.’ The steward said to him, ‘Here is your promissory note; write one for eighty.’ And the master commended that dishonest steward for acting prudently. “For the children of this world are more prudent in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. I tell you, make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth, so that when it fails, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings. The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones; and the person who is dishonest in very small matters is also dishonest in great ones. If, therefore, you are not trustworthy with dishonest wealth, who will trust you with true wealth? If you are not trustworthy with what belongs to another, who will give you what is yours? 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 both God and mammon.” (Luke 16:1-13)

God or Money Our Lord tell us in today’s Gospel that we cannot have it both ways. “You cannot be the slave both of God and of money.” This implies that money can become a god. One often gets the impression that much of economic and social life is driven by those who are slaves of money. A slave of money cannot, our Lord tells us, be a servant of God for such a person serves another god. St Paul describes greed as worshipping a false god (Col 3:5), and as the root of all evil (1 Tim 6:10). Further, a slave of money will disregard the one in need, and there is a warning from the prophet Amos on God’s behalf: “Never will I forget a single thing you have done” (Amos 8: 4-7). A secular society relegates God to the private sphere as a mere opinion. But the Church teaches that it is the vocation of the lay Catholic Christian to bring God and what He has revealed directly to bear on society, on the world of work and on economic activity. In these social spheres we are to be slaves of God, and not of money. Only if this is so will economic prosperity bring true happiness and success to man. Christian morality as Christ revealed it will be found to be a powerful key to the true economic and social flourishing of the life of peoples. But for this to happen, what Christ has revealed must be known. This is why it is important to be aware of the Church’s social teaching. A great need of the modern day is that the lay Catholic try to know what the Church teaches on the matter of economic and social progress, and then endeavour to apply it to concrete circumstances. Too few Catholics know it and too few are therefore able to apply it to their daily lives at work and in society. Too few are able to use it in political and economic discussion, and too few are able to assess what is happening in society in the light of it. Too few draw on it in the formulation of political and economic policy. I invite you to purchase and read carefully the teachings of the popes on these matters, such as, for instance, John Paul II’s Encyclical on work, or Benedict XVI’s Encyclical on Charity in Truth.

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries a great revolution occurred in European and British industry. The means of economic production were developed in remarkable steps. With this industrial revolution and success, notions of society and the state, notions of ownership and labour — notions that forgot the true interests of the individual — quickly took possession of those who controlled the means of production. What God has revealed about the nature of the human being and his true vocation in this world and in the next were lost from sight, and religion was relegated to private life. One such group of notions assumed that social and economic life ought allow for a completely free rein to the quest for economic profits, and that this profit motive would bring prosperity to society. It was a rampant liberalism that disregarded the suffering caused to the worker without capital. By contrast and in reaction to this, another set of notions assumed that the rights of individuals and groups should be subordinated completely to a collective (rather than individual) organisation of production, controlled by the state. In both cases, in fact, “money” was the master which man served. There have been various notions of what is important to man in his social and economic life, but the ever-recurring danger is that of forgetting that in everything man is called to be God’s servant, and never the servant of the creature. It is only the service of God which will provide a truly humane society, and bring true happiness to man. How a truly human vision of society and economic life is to be maintained in the modern world, with the vocation of the human person to be a servant of God and not of money being kept constantly in view, is spelt out in the Church’s social teaching. This teaching applies what our Lord has revealed to modern life in its social and economic dimensions. At the heart of it is an understanding of and respect for the human person as God has revealed him to be. He is not just a means of production and profit, nor is he just a unit supporting the economic and political power of organizing bodies. He has a vocation from God for both this world and the next. He is called to serve God with all his heart in everything. As our Lord tells us, you cannot serve God and money. For the sake of the flourishing of society, this divinely revealed but revolutionary idea has to gain ground. Man, society and the world needs God to flourish.

Let us resolve to put on the mind of Christ in respect to all aspects of human life, including social and economic life. This will be done by growing in the knowledge of what the Church our Mother teaches, including what she teaches about the economic and social life of the world in general. Let us make it our business to get hold of this teaching, as expressed in the social Encyclicals of the Popes, and study it. Man’s true vocation to be a servant of God above all else is to be placed at the centre of all human activity, and its implications understood and brought to bear on all his activity.

(E.J.Tyler)

Further reading: The Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.2407-2436 (Respect for people and their goods, The social doctrine of the church, economic activity, and social justice)

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A second reflection on the readings for the 25th Sunday C-2

Scripture today: Amos 8:4-7; Psalm 112; 1 Timothy 2:1-8; Luke 16:1-13

Jesus Christ In our first reading from the letter to Timothy today, St Paul urges that we pray for all, but the reason he gives for this is the point to notice here. For, St Paul says, God desires all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth. The great reason for praying for everyone is that God wishes all to be saved. So we ought pray that his divine will be done. He loves all, whatever be their religion, or even if they have none. He created us to be happy, and has told us where we are to find the happiness he has planned for us. It is to be found in friendship with him, and he has come among us in the person of his Son Jesus to make this friendship so much more possible. Even when we frustrate his plan for us by sinning, he still offers salvation through Jesus, provided we come to him for pardon. God is every man’s happiness. There is a further point. God wants all to be saved, St Paul says, and to reach full knowledge of the truth. It is most important that all come to know the truth of the one true God who has revealed himself to us. ‘For there is only one God, and there is only one mediator between God and mankind, himself a man, Christ Jesus’ (1 Timothy 2:1-8). As our Lord himself said at the Last Supper, no one comes to the Father but through me, and as Peter said before the Sanhedrin, his is the only name by which we can be saved. We ought keep this uncompromising dogma of the Christian faith clearly in mind in this day and age. It is an age when we are blessed with a greater appreciation of the elements of truth and goodness in other religions. While those religions exemplify and illustrate man’s striving after God and contain very many elements of truth (including, of course, many elements of error), it is only Christ who truly takes us to salvation in God, because he is himself God, and our Redeemer as well. He is the unfailing way to God, provided we take it. His life is the most perfect expression of God’s plan for us.

Christ is the embodiment of God, the image of the unseen God. In him dwells the fulness of the Godhead bodily. Many do not know Christ. Many try to approach God through other means, and other names. I remember attending a talk by a professor of religious studies, who was a member of the Zoroastrian faith, founded by Zarathustra in Persia some centuries before Christ. It was clear that the professor did not believe that any one religion has the full truth, rather that all had bits of it. In fact he thought that religion is best described as a “technology” — a way to get things. The Christian religion is in contradiction to this. St Paul says that in Christ we receive every heavenly blessing. All too often the Christian does not take advantage of the supreme benefit he has of possessing Christ by virtue of baptism. Christian teaching is clear: Jesus is the fullness of God corporally. As such he is God’s gift of himself to humanity. There are millions who have not known Christ and who do not know him. Whether they realize it or not, whatever truth and grace is enjoyed in the practice of religion, it will be a means of salvation only if it comes ultimately from Christ. He is the only way to the Father. He is the way, the truth and the life. Any saving truth comes from Jesus, and the unseen Jesus can be located here on earth. He is to be found in his Church. The Christian knows this, but he must act on it and use wisely the time and all the resources he has been given by God. And this is the point made in today’s Gospel (Luke 16:1-13). The unjust steward was not praised for being dishonest with his master’s money. He was praised for being smart in his cunning use of means to attain his chosen goals. The goal of the Christian is to know, love and serve Jesus and so be with him forever in heaven. So let us be smart in the use we make of all that God has given us, whether it be our talents, our time, our possessions, our money.

Let us then use all life’s resources to attain union with Jesus, to bring others into union with him, and to serve the church, the world, and society in such a way that God will be truly honoured and glorified.

(E.J.Tyler)

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