YOU CANNOT SERVE BOTH GOD AND MONEY

 


SATURDAY, ELEVENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

Reflection from Friar Nicholas Okeke, OP 

2 Chron 24:17-25; Ps 98:4-5,29-34; Mt 6:24-34

You cannot serve both God and money

Prayer and the desires of our hearts have the same origin, for prayers are desires expressed to our God. Thus, many people do not connect to the Lord’s prayer because it does not express the deep yearning of their hearts. In other words, any Christian who has no spiritual or interior life would find the Lord’s prayer not suitable for his kind of prayer. As we explained in yesterday’s reflection, every aspect of the Lord’s prayer contains a germ or seed of a part of the divine revelation by our Lord Jesus Christ. So, if our regenerated spirit is dormant, we would not draw our lives from the Lord, who is the Spirit. We can only live a heavenly life through the Holy Spirit communing with our regenerated spirit. If we are not drawing our life from deep within, which is our spiritual part, then we are drawing it from without. A life drawn without is ruled or governed by external values, riches, and wealth. Our Lord puts this clearly in these words: “No one can be the slave of two masters: he will either hate the first and love the second, or treat the first with respect and the second with scorn. You cannot be the slave both of God and of money.” We are ruled by what we desire and love. To love the world and yearn for its riches and wealth is to be the slave of money. It is to serve the god of money.

When the desire to acquire more money and riches of this world is predominant in our hearts, it will militate against our being good Christians. A Christian is given a heavenly life by his profession of faith in Jesus Christ and rejects the prince of this world and his wealth and riches. We are to watch ourselves and be on guard against the growth of this worldly desire and avarice of every kind in our consciousness. We should pray always to maintain our conscious attention on God as our spiritual good. Since prayer and desire have a common origin, our desire for the heavenly goods outlined in the prayer our Lord taught us must be predominant in our hearts. We recall that the care and desire for things of this world constitute the thorns and brambles that choked the word of God in the parable of the Sower. To guard against this danger that can easily overtake us, the Lord admonished us not to worry but to trust in God. “That is why I am telling you not to worry about your life and what you are to eat, nor about your body and how you are to clothe it. Surely life means more than food, and the body more than clothing!” It is based on this heavenly wisdom that we commented yesterday that material goods ought not occupy our interest or prayer much, because the Lord assured us of that. Hence, we concluded that the petition for our daily bread is more of spiritual needs than material needs.

The words of our Lord confirmed this interpretation of that petition. The Lord referred to birds and flowers of the field that do not pray to God for their material needs. But the heavenly Father takes care of them. According to the gospel, we become pagans when we allow these worldly desires to occupy our hearts and minds. “So do not worry; do not say, “What are we to eat? What are we to drink? How are we to be clothed? It is the pagans who set their hearts on all these things. Your heavenly Father knows you need them all. Set your hearts on his kingdom first, and on his righteousness, and all these other things will be given you as well.” These words from our Lord are profound and worth giving a lot of time. The Lord, in these words, explained the meaning and purpose of prayer. Subsequently, he pointed out what spirituality entails. We must let our love and desire for our heavenly Father and home be the central concern of our hearts every day and every moment. This is what praying at all times means. This is what being a Christian implies. To aim for physical riches and well-being in exclusion of God is to invite calamity and disaster into our lives, families, and communities, as the people of Judah did in the first reading. To be at home with the Lord is the meaning of life. The true religion is to love and worship God with our whole hearts, minds, and strength.

Let us pray: Grant us, Lord, the grace to know that you made us for yourself alone, that we may have our focus on you the origin and source of all good things, that we may love and worship you with our whole being.   

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