Today's Readings
"No one can serve two masters." Why not? Because no one is two people. Each of us is only one person. I think though, that we quickly see what Jesus missed: time. Time allows us to serve two masters, today I will serve one, tomorrow I will serve the other. Many people live their lives using this principle. Monday through Friday, 8 to 6, I serve one master. Each morning, 7 to 8, I serve God. The rest of the time I split between myself and my family.
But Jesus did not forget about time. Jesus created time. He knows all about time. He knows how we grumble about going to work, how we grumble about missing work, how we grumble about going to Mass. So he says that if we try to serve two masters, we will hate one and love the other. He knows that we will have to do all kinds of practical things and he has given us time to do them, but he is teaching us today that we will only love one master.
Which of your masters do you love: God, Mammon, or yourself? Whichever one we love, we will see the others as inconveniences. Is earning money preventing you from praying or is praying preventing you from earning money? A favorite meditation of this world is, "What if I won the lottery?" The people of this world like to consider what they would do if they had so much money. This question has the potential to reveal whether we serve Mammon or God.
A Christian should be able to say that if they won the lottery, nothing much would change. Sure, they could pay off loans. Perhaps buy a new house and car. But then what? Would their life, day to day, be any different? Does money have so much power over them that it defines what they do, who they are?
If you are supporting yourself with a job that you hate, which you would quit tomorrow if you could, you should really consider whether you could quit today. I am not referring to hard work. There is no virtue in replacing hard work with laziness. I mean that if you are doing something useless, without dignity, something which in no way is serving God or neighbor, who are you serving? God gave each of us one life, we should not undervalue that life and sell it for money. Your life is worth more than any possession, more than anything this culture presumes you should own.
Daily Homilies
