Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time ~ Year C
Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time ~ Year C (pdf)
Spiritual Reflection
No servant can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and mammon. Lk 16: 13
“No One Can Serve Two Masters”
“No one can serve two masters” (Mt 6:24). Who are these masters (Greek: kyrios)? One is Christ, our one true Lord – Kyrios. The other is mammon – the false kyrios, the false Lord. To serve mammon is to enslave oneself and become dependent on some kind of material or spiritual good. Notice that mammon is called a master, who is served as one serves a king. We either serve God and love Him and despise mammon, that is, our attachments to material and spiritual goods, or – it is terrifying even to think – we love our attachment to these goods and, perhaps unconsciously, we begin to despise God.
If you analyze your prayer, this will help you to identify what forms and images mammon takes in your life. If you take stock of what you are thinking about most often during prayer, then you will see what your greatest treasure is. “For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be” (Mt 6:21). Your distractions will allow you to discover how many attachments to mammon you have. If there are many, do not be surprised that it is difficult for you to concentrate during the rosary, during adoration, or during the Eucharist…
What can this mammon that enslaves your heart be? It can be material as well as spiritual goods. For example, it can be attachment to money, to your children, to your work, or to something you are presently creating or working on. It may be attachment to peace or even to one’s perfection. All these attachments cause your bondage and bring you slavery. As a human being you can choose to attach yourself to the one and only reality – the will of God. Everything that enslaves you closes you off from God and diminishes your faith...
While standing before the Lord during prayer, show Him not only your empty hands, but also your dirty hands defiled by your attachments to mammon, and pray that He will have mercy on you. Prayer can develop only in the atmosphere of freedom. As a disciple of Christ, you are especially called to contemplative prayer. For your prayer to become contemplation – a loving gaze on Jesus Christ, your beloved – it is essential to have a free heart. That is why Christ fights so much for your heart to be free. He fights through various events, difficulties, and storms, all the while giving you the chance to cooperate intensely with grace. In all these situations, Christ expects that you will try to cleanse your heart soiled by attachments and servitude to mammon. Hence, all these difficult moments and all the storms are graces for you. They are the passing of the Merciful Lord who loves you so much that He wants to give you this magnificent gift – the gift of the total freedom of your heart. Your heart should not be divided; it should be a heart solely for Him.
To have faith means to see and understand the meaning of your life in accordance with the Gospel, and that God is most important. Your life is to be oriented toward Him – primarily to seek and to build His kingdom, with faith that everything else will be given to you (cf. Mt 6:33).
Tadeusz Dajczer, The Gift of Faith, pp.19-22
References from the Catechism of the Catholic Church 1
741 Liberation and salvation. By his glorious Cross Christ has won salvation for all men. He redeemed them from the sin that held them in bondage. "For freedom Christ has set us free."34 In him we have communion with the "truth that makes us free."35 The Holy Spirit has been given to us and, as the Apostle teaches, "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom."36 Already we glory in the "liberty of the children of God."37
1742 Freedom and grace. The grace of Christ is not in the slightest way a rival of our freedom when this freedom accords with the sense of the true and the good that God has put in the human heart. On the contrary, as Christian experience attests especially in prayer, the more docile we are to the promptings of grace, the more we grow in inner freedom and confidence during trials, such as those we face in the pressures and constraints of the outer world. By the working of grace the Holy Spirit educates us in spiritual freedom in order to make us free collaborators in his work in the Church and in the world
Almighty and merciful God, in your goodness take away from us all that is harmful, so that, made ready both in mind and body, we may freely accomplish your will.38
Questions for Reflection
1. How can I recognize some forms of mammon in my life?
2. How is God present in these situations? What is His invitation?
3. Mary was free from attachments and therefore free to collaborate with Christ. What graces can I ask of Her in order to obtain “freedom” and be attached to the greatest Treasure?
Prayer after Sharing
Thank you, God, for allowing me to see the truth about my weaknesses and how it calls upon the abyss of your merciful Love.