The Sunday Sermon Archive

Dear Friend,

Today our Holy Mother the Church presents us with the Gospel parable of the unjust steward who wasted his master's goods. (Luke 15: 1-9).

We are all stewards of God's goods. Everything that we have and everything that we are, are entrusted to us only for a time by God. An evil spirit tempts us to think that we are masters of ourselves or even of the things God has given us. We all have to give an account of what we have done with all God has given us.

The worldly steward is prudent in foreseeing this future judgment and preparing for that time when he can no longer be a steward. We are to draw from this parable a spiritual instruction.

Many in society today wish to believe or convince others that they are the masters of their bodies and the lord over any children that God may place within their bodies. We hear ad nauseum, "My body, my choice." The materialists have succeeded in getting many people to turn their backs upon God and trust only in physical reality. With God out of the picture, there is no higher authority than oneself. This quickly degenerates to become whatever offers the greatest pleasure or the least inconvenience.

The illusion that we are masters of ourselves rather than stewards who will one day be required to give an account leads us down the path of many moral perversions against proper order. Since the fall of Adam, the hearts and minds of men have been tempted by the illusions painted by evil spirits. There seems to be no limit to the depth of darkness or depravity that the human mind can conceive. This has always been the case, but our days have compounded the problem exponentially. The world wide web has given a cloak of anonymity to present various depravities openly to the world. As those entertaining these perversions meet with others and find acceptance, they lose all sense of shame or fear. Perversions are rapidly becoming normalized and accepted.

Those who refuse to go along with the acceptance and normalizing of sin, vice, and perversion are labeled as narrow-minded, prejudiced, and phobic. This is the complete inversion of order. Vice is promoted as a virtue, and anyone who opposes vice is labeled evil. Opposition to any perversity ends up being barred from the "online community" and from all real-world communities.

While the world and the devils promote the lie that we are free to indulge in any activity or bias that the dark recesses of the human heart can fathom; reason, faith, and religion tell us that we must answer to a higher authority. While we are relatively free to defy God here on earth, there are consequences to these actions in eternity.

Rejection of our responsibilities to God entices our fallen nature, but it never goes well. There are always consequences to our actions here and in eternity. The abuse of our bodies leads to many pains and physical and psychological difficulties. The lives of many that live according to their perverse passions clearly show that they are unhappy with themselves. We often find that those materially with the most suffer the most spiritually. With the increase in acceptance of unnatural or perverse "lifestyles" comes the concomitant increase in depression, despair, and suicide.

The life that we have is our own in one sense. We are relatively free to live this life as we wish, but there are always consequences to our choices and actions. From a different perspective, our lives are not our own. Our life has consequences on the lives of others, for which we must make ourselves conscious. We will also have to give God an account of the life we have lived when we leave this world.

Our life and our bodies are only ours for a brief while. We all see very clearly that death will take them away from us. A life that is lived only in pursuit of passing pleasures is an empty and wasted life. A life that is lived for others is a life that is filled with joy. It is truly in giving that we receive. This is love — freely giving of ourselves for the benefit of others. This is what Jesus has done for us, and He desires that we reciprocate by giving ourselves to Him and our fellow men out of love for Him.

The day will arrive when we must give an account of the stewardship of our lives and bodies here on earth. If we are wise, we will think of this and begin preparing for the Day of Judgment. The time to labor and do good works or to beg and plead will be over. Now is the time to put our lives in order.

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