The Sunday Sermon Archive

Dear Friends in Christ,

We are all servants and none of us can serve two different or opposed masters. While we can choose our master, we do not have a choice of serving. We can serve mammon (worldly riches, pleasures, or demons) or we can serve God. We cannot serve both God and mammon. We must choose one or the other.

Our purpose or reason for service likewise falls into two different categories. 1)We can serve one master out of love, but then we will hate the other master. Or 2) We can serve one master slavishly (out of fear), and then we will despise the other master. If we choose God as our Master, we can serve Him out of love, and then we will hate mammon. If we serve Him out of fear, then we will despise mammon. If we choose mammon as our master, we can serve it out of love, and then we will hate God. If we serve mammon out of fear, then we will despise God.

Servants we are and serve we must. We can choose God or mammon as our master. We can serve as loving children or as fearful slaves.

Obviously, the best for us is to choose to serve God and to do so as His loving children. This means that we must not only despise mammon but even hate it. Yet, we need and must use the things of this world. We must labor for our daily bread even as we beg it from the hand of God. Jesus tells us not to be solicitous but also not to be indifferent.

We are called to labor for the love of God, not to labor for the love of mammon. When we work for God, we will receive what we need for both body and soul. The goal is not to work for mammon, but in working for the love of God we will obtain even what we need for our bodies here on earth. In working for God, we do not become slaves to the job, or slaves to money, or slaves to power. However, in serving God we obtain a spiritual reward in Heaven, but also all that we need here for our bodies.

Jesus is not telling us to be physically idle. It is God's will that we labor with our bodies; it is good and healthy for us. Those who will not work, neither should they eat. When we consider Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazarus, we recall that Martha was rebuked for all her busyness while Mary had chosen the better part, sitting at the feet of Jesus and listening to Him. Martha's activities were not evil or wrong; they were necessary. It was Martha's concern or worry about many things that was being rebuked. She was concerned about many things, when her concerns should have been singleness of purpose — serving Jesus. The labors can still be done and be pleasing to God when they are performed with the right and good intentions of serving God. As we labor, if we are focused upon serving God, we are not concerned with what others are doing or not doing.

Our reasons or motivations for why we labor are important. Are we laboring for things or for God? Do we labor for the praise of others? For monetary compensation? For the pride and vanity of our accomplishments? The love of praise, money, or pride and vanity sets us against God. This kind of solicitousness is the love of mammon, not God. The fear of being punished, losing wages, being humiliated, etc., is serving mammon out of fear, and this leads us to despise God.

We must labor; we must serve. We may choose Who or what we serve — God or mammon. We may further choose why or how we serve — out of love or fear. In choosing God as our Master and serving Him as loving children, we have nothing further to concern ourselves with. He is our father, and He will provide for what we need. Our labors performed out of love for God will produce the food, shelter, and clothing that we are in need of.

Idleness is not serving. Even when our bodies are still like Martha's sister Mary, sitting at the feet of Jesus, our souls must be active in loving and serving God. Our bodies must be active, at least from time to time, or they will atrophy. It is God's will that we physically labor, and Jesus would have us do so not for the love or servile fear of mammon, nor out of servile fear of God, but rather as God's children lovingly serving their father.

May the Immaculate Heart of Mary inspire, guide, and protect us.

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