Dear Brothers and Sisters,
This word today reveals our idolatry. Jesus Christ knows us very well and he reads our hearts perfectly. He is the only one who knows the heart of man. He is leading us through today’s gospel. You cannot serve two masters. You might have doubts about putting it this way but don’t deceive yourself. The battle is between God and money. You cannot serve both. Money is not evil; it is good to give alms to, you can do good things with money, but Jesus is speaking about how money can easily dominate us. Money can be your master. It dominates you and all areas of your life. What does it mean that money has power over you? It means that you are no longer free. All your relationships with others, your marriage, your family, everything is dominated by money. The Lord of money is in charge. We bow before it.
But the good news is Christ is the Lord of a Christian. If you are a Christian, Christ is your Lord and you and I are called to be servants like Mary. She said to the angel, “Behold I am the slave of the Lord.” Mary is the prototype of a Christian. In the early centuries many of the first Christians died as martyrs because instead of saying, “Christ is the Lord”, they were told they had to say, “Caesar is the Lord.” It was just one word that was different. If they said Caesar, they were saved. It is the same thing with money. If Christ is your Lord, then money is not. We always choose money because we go to the lower thing, and we need a miracle that leads us to make Christ our Lord. It is a battle you will have all your life.
I like the comparison of money with a shadow that you will always have until the day you die. When you are six feet under you will not have a shadow but until then you will have a shadow, which is this love of money. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have it. The more light you have, the more there is a shadow, but the closer you get to the light which is Christ, the shadow follows you and you will have fewer problems with money. If you go looking for the shadow that means you are going away from the light, the shadow runs away from you, and you will never catch it. The further you move from the light, the more it runs from you. When you serve the Lord, you will start to realize that you lack nothing.
Jesus commends this steward because he is making friends with his master’s debtors. He is not stealing from them but is giving up his commission to befriend these men. With the first debtor, his profit for the hundred measures of oil would have been fifty, but now he tells the debtor that he now owes fifty rather than one hundred. With the second debtor, he tells him rather than owing my master one hundred measures of wheat, you only owe him eighty since his commission was only twenty. He is making friends so that he has a place to stay after he leaves his master. He is following what Jesus said about being a disciple: he has to renounce all his possessions. Renounce all your possessions to follow Christ and run towards the light and the shadow will follow you, rather than you running after the shadow.
The steward gives up all his earnings, but he will not lack anything. He will not know what to do with everything God is going to give him because God is generous with those who take risks; he is extraordinarily generous. I can tell you because I have experienced it. It is like falling in love when you think about the person all day long and you get goose bumps all over. You may think you understand but you don’t until you have this experience. I can tell you that giving up all your possessions is the truth, but deep down there is a doubt because your whole life has been to acquire possessions. You save a little each month to get the car or the apartment or the new phone. It is good to ask yourself the question a fundamental question that we will all face: what are you living for? Some people are honest and say I am living to make money to support my family. Others say I am living to serve God, which is nonsense, even the priest doesn’t do that. We all have this struggle until we die. You cannot serve God and money.
When you realize that you are serving money realize that you have left the Lord; you put God out the window no matter how often you come to the community or how many rosaries you say or masses you attend. They don’t matter because you are serving money. You can even use religion to serve money. How many of you come here because you think I will do better in life if you come to church. I volunteer in church, I use envelopes, I pray a lot for the others. We are all hoping for a better job. This is deep in our bones because we are all naturally religious people. It is very difficult to get out of natural religiosity. The faith that God wants to give us is the sure knowledge that we can do nothing, nothing without Christ. It is something extraordinary that God has to do in our lives. At some point he touches you with divine grace and you experience a wonderful joy and peace, and you don’t know where it came from.
The fight against money is always present or should be present. Today you can serve God and tomorrow it can be money; it is a constant battle. The community, the Eucharist, the Word helps us to discover this love of money. The Word does not denounce us; it loves us and lights our path and reveals the darkness inside of us. It helps us to discover we have this love of money and that there is hope. One day you can enter the wonderful banquet that God has prepared for all of us who are idolaters, yes, I am the first, my money, my projects, my affections.
There is a prophet in Scripture, Hosea, that God called to marry a prostitute. Can you believe it? God tells him to marry a prostitute, and he does it. God wants to make a sign to his people that this is who we are. We are like prostitutes going from one affection to the next and God still continues to love us. He is always faithful to us, but we are like prostitutes going to the next person for love, for a little affection. But he remains faithful. This is why he has you here today because he continues to love you even if you are unfaithful; he remains faithful. This is what we celebrate in this eucharist, in this banquet. The Lord is faithful; his love is eternal, eternal, which means it never ends. He is the firm rock on which you can stand, not like you and me who are quicksand. Today your spouse loves you, tomorrow, we will see. When he is being nice to you, you know what he wants.
Christ tells us today, “I am willing to stay with you because I am the one who will do the work and will remain faithful. I know that you cannot, but I can. So don’t be afraid.” One day the Lord will give us this freedom. Test yourself with your love for money. Take a risk, do something crazy. Renounce your possessions and embrace the light of Jesus Christ and you will see what a good business it is because you will get so much more, so much more than you can imagine. You can look around here that is a small example of what Christ has done. Remember the leaks in the roof and all the watermarks inside the church. The lyceum (church basement) that was closed by the town for twenty-five years; you could barely walk down there. The debts that we had. The broken parking lots with people tripping all the time. Now everything is well done and beautiful; come and see it. When you don’t chase money, when you seek the Lord; he gives you so much more.