Homily for the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time

For daily readings, see http://www.usccb.org/nab/092307.shtml

Pay yourself first. Any financial adviser would give this advice for one who seeks security within this world. And there is nothing wrong with this solid advice given by financial advisers everywhere, unless of course, you are a disciple of Christ who truly listens to today’s Gospel.
I submit to you that our Gospel for today says to pay God first, for you cannot serve both God and mammon. Mammon is another word for avarice, or greed, and it is personified in the New Testament as a demon that seeks to possess persons. It is true that God does not need our money; He who made everything has no use for our money. He is please not by a sacrifice of gold, but by a sacrifice of our very lives. It can be said as well that the Church does not ‘need’ our money. The Church that Christ founded is guaranteed by the gift of the Holy Spirit, and is thus in no danger of extermination even if people stop giving to it. The Church is built of living stones; even our greatest physical Churches are without the invisible Church whitewashed tombs. Our greatest cathedrals serve only to make visible the dignity given to the living Church by Christ; they are in no way necessary in and of themselves.
So why pay God first if He doesn’t need our money? Well, today’s readings put it to us this way: we show whether we are children of this world only or children of light by the clever ways in which we use the resources available to us. Jesus challenges his disciples in today’s Gospel to be as clever in preserving the divine life of faith given in baptism as we are in preserving our well-being on this earth.
It is true that all of us are impressed by the cleverness of criminals. How many movies out there glamorize the life of criminals – Tony Soprano is one of the most popular icons in the country now because of his cleverness in cheating people, despite the fact that He is a murderer. I admit myself that I have watched Oceans Eleven several times and love watching the eleven criminals execute the perfect crime. The rich man in today’s Gospel admires the resourcefulness of his steward, who cheats his way into securing a future for himself. Jesus says to his disciples to be even more clever in preserving the divine life that has been entrusted to them. And He promises His disciples that if they are trustworthy in this small matter of guarding the divine light within them, He will put us in charge of much of His kingdom. And what a privilege that would be!
We are instructed this morning to stop serving two masters. One of the best ways of doing this is to give to God first, and to yourself what is leftover. This commandment of giving to God first is not based on God’s need to receive, or for that matter, the Church’s need to receive, but is based on our need to give. Since the money and material things we have no value beyond this world, and are tainted with original sin as are all things of this world, we are told to show that our hearts are truly set on the eternal things of heaven by the way we use this dishonest wealth in making friends. Whatever you did for the least of my brothers, you did it for me. This is the standard set before us at the end of Matthew’s Gospel, and in using the wealth we have in this world to evangelize the poor in body and in spirit, we use dishonest wealth to make friends who will welcome us into our eternal dwellings.

Giving 10% of what we have to the Church is a good starting point, but this is not the maximum that we are called to give in order to give evidence that our hearts are set on the things of heaven – we can give more than 10%. Much of our giving should go to our local parish and diocese – it is a sign on our part that we recognize the Church as the one Christ founded and despite the imperfections of the Church, we trust Her to complete the mission given to Her by Christ. This giving to the local parish or diocese can be harder than ever given the big payouts by many dioceses to settle sex abuse claims. The Church must continue to be purified of Her sins and to be a better steward of what is entrusted to Her, but we should not weaken the Church any further by refusing to give. We also give to Catholic schools, missions and many charities that work for justice and deliver the charity that is a constitutive element of our life in Christ, as Pope Benedict XVI explained in his first encyclical Deus Caritas Est.
Some people who have debt or who do not make a lot of money use this as an excuse not to give, and point their fingers at the wealthy who do not give. It is true that prudence would have us withhold our giving at special times in order to achieve sustainability in our personal budgets, but it is more often true that the money we do not give ends up being spent in frivolous ways, and we feel even worse for withholding it in the first place. One of the greatest effects of stewardship is that giving freely helps us to concentrate even more on using well the things we already have, and buying only the things we really need. As the widow who put her last two cents into the temple treasure teaches us, those who have the least should actually lead the way in giving freely, lest one day they turn into the rich young man who walked away from Jesus because He had many possessions. As the Gospel says, we cannot serve both God and mammon, and statistics on giving clearly indicate that the more money a person has, the smaller percentage of their income they give to charity.
St. Paul in his letter to Timothy especially wishes for kings and for all in authority to be men of prayer. Let us pray also today for all those who are entrusted with leadership, that through their prayer they will be faithful in small matters, especially in their attention to the moral life, so that they may also be great stewards of the tremendout authority entrusted to them. Let us pray that the light of Jesus’ resurrection would continue to reach those areas of our world shrouded in darkness, and that many leaders would arise who know how to shrewdly use the things of this world to reveal the eternal kingdom of heaven. And may those of us still on pilgrimage in this world, who approach the Holy Eucharist today, also use every resources available to us to guard the treasure of divine life that is fed today at this holy table from the passing attractions of this world.