Mammon Masters Us

We hear very clearly today that no one can serve two masters. We can either serve God or serve mammon. There is no serving both.

When we look at our own lives. Who are we primarily serving?

I think most of us would say: Mammon. After all, we need mammon to pay for our homes, our cars, our families, and our lives. Even to send our kids to parochial schools and give to our parishes and ministries requires mammon. Inflation of everything including food has caused us all to realize that more and more mammon is needed to survive.

Most of the time, our worldly jobs master us. We spend more time at our jobs than anywhere else and most of us work for businesses. The main objective at those businesses are making money, again — mammon. Based on that, we can infer that mammon is who most of us are serving, even those of us who desire to serve God above all. How much of our time, our lives, our thoughts, and our moods are taken up by concerns over our jobs? My point exactly -- Mammon masters us.

So as we’re reading this Gospel today, if you’re trying to be a faithful disciple, I’m sure like me, you feel a little stuck and conflicted. You recognize that you need mammon to survive, but you also recognize that God is telling you that you can’t serve two masters, which means your job shouldn't be taking up so much of your time, life, thoughts, and moods. And even if your spouse gets to serve God in such a way, like staying home and catechizing the children, what happens when you’re the provider for your family and can’t do the same? Are you serving mammon? These are hard questions. 

I don’t have an answer to this conflict today other than that it is something to take to prayer. How do we navigate this conflict? How do we not serve mammon and serve God? How do we keep mammon in its proper place while prioritizing the Lord’s purposes for our lives and caring for those in need? How do we remain detached from an obsession with money and material things while placing our values on the spiritual? How do we live the quiet and tranquil life in all devotion and dignity that is good and pleasing to God which Paul speaks of in the second reading? 

Here's one last thought that may help: When I think about a quiet, tranquil, and less-focused-on-mammon life, I think about my grandparents - both sets of them - who lived this kind of life. Modest homes. Modest lifestyles. Prayerful lives. Homebodies to some extent. Neither set were all that ambitious and accepted their roles for what they were. Both had large families - 5 kids and 6 kids which tempered any materialism that could have seeped into their homes. My grandfathers worked full time until retirement, and my grandmothers worked some but did more of the service to the home, children, etc. I never gathered that they lived for their jobs, their vacations, or a lavish lifestyle.

Maybe that's what God is going for in this Gospel today. A life well balanced and well prioritized on what is most important, with faith at the center.

Perhaps the generations before us had this Gospel figured out a bit better than we do, and maybe there's something to learn there.