That Tainted Thing

31st Week in Ordinary Time - Saturday; Memorial of St Leo the Great (10 November 2018)

Philippians 4:10-19

Luke 16:9-15

“You cannot be the slave both of God and of money.”

One of the biggest problems of this world is the abuse of money. We know about corruption at all levels of the government, church, organizations, etc. We are well aware that the universal church too, especially at the Vatican, is struggling with a lot of financial scams (the other problem equally acute is the cover up of sexual abuses within the clergy). We also know that there is no easy solution for these problems. But there is one thing that we can do, and that is our own clarity with regard to money, and our own integrity. When we look into ourselves we will surely see a solution or a way-ahead to this problem. We are part of the evil that we are fighting against.

Many of us do still think that money can give us happiness. This is a lie that we need to fight. Money and wealth can't give us true joy. We need material things, we need to possess things. But isn't it true that material things start possessing us (at least at times)? Don't we find ourselves collecting things that we don't need? How many of us are poorer than our Master Jesus? Don't we find ourselves craving for more than we need? Have we given in to greed and avarice in our lives? It's true that the world needs to deal with its financial scams and problems, but first of all I need to solve my own issues with greed and abuse of money.

Have we become a slave to money? Do we find ourselves serving money rather than God? Who or what is the centre of our lives? If we don't find God at the centre of our lives, then we need to start from our hearts. When there is no experience of the True Sacred, we will always fall into the worship of the false sacred. If God is not God, we will ourselves become gods and create strange gods or idols in our hearts. One of the idols is money. Other idols may be celebrities, jobs, self-image, security, family, power, sex.

The idols or strange gods would be easy to recognize and dethrone if they were obviously evil, ugly stone statues, or the pagan gods of religions other than our own. But the substitutes for the True Sacred are probably as well denied and disguised today as they were in Jesus' time. Money was an obvious idol that Jesus was fighting as today's gospel would witness.

Let us listen to his own words, clear as crystal: "I tell you this: use money, tainted as it is, to win you friends, and thus make sure that when it fails you, they will welcome you into the tents of eternity. The man who can be trusted in little things can be trusted in great; the man who is dishonest in little things will be dishonest in great. If then you cannot be trusted with money, that tainted thing, who will trust you with genuine riches?"

I think we as a church have neglected these clear instructions of Jesus. His approach seems to say, "Let us take care of ourselves, giving the first place always to God, and not to money or anything else or anyone else. If we are honest with small things, that would be a great start."