Saturday in the 11th Week of Ordinary Time, June 22, 2024

Matthew 6, 24-34

Jesus said to his disciples: “No one 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 God and mammon.  Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you more important than they? Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life-span? Why are you anxious about clothes? Learn from the way the wild flowers grow. They do not work or spin. But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was clothed like one of them. If God so clothes the grass of the field, which grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will he not much more provide for you, O you of little faith? So do not worry and say, ‘What are we to eat?’ or ‘What are we to drink?’ or ‘What are we to wear?’ All these things the pagans seek. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides. Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil.”

“No one 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 God and Mammon.”  The Lord speaks of the ancient Syriac god of wealth, rather than of wealth itself or greed.  In doing so, he first makes the point that as “Mammon” was a foreign god, so greed and avarice ought to be foreign to those who believe in the true God.  Serving this Mammon, then, is as though to enlist in the service of a foreign king — the very idea of which the Jews of the time of Jesus found particularly abhorrent: “We are the seed of Abraham: and we have never been slaves to any man” (John 8, 33).  The Jew and the Christian of the time would have found a further aspect of Mammon quite disturbing:  Mammon was associated with the underworld, since gold and silver — wealth — was found in the ground: for Jews and Christians, the underground is the realm of demons, as in, “And when [Christ’s witnesses] shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascended out of the abyss shall make war against them and shall overcome them and kill them” (Revelation 11, 7).  Thus, we cannot serve both God and the devil.  The choice of whom we shall serve is a stark one.  In this regard, we ought to recall the words of God at the time of the Exodus: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Choose therefore life, that both you and your seed may live” (Deuteronomy 30, 19).  

All that we need in order to live and to serve God will be provided us.  Necessity is provided us and this compels us to work, but the monetary gains from work are outweighed by the profit won from the seeds of faith which we cast on the field — the people — of our work.  As this is the primary gain of our labor, God sees to our physical care: “Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides.”  

We are also not to worry about what we are to eat, what we are to wear, where we are to live: “Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil.”  This might remind us of the words of St. Peter: “Cast all your cares upon God, for he has care of you” (1 Peter 5, 7).  Some of us are given to chronic worrying and anxiety.  To overcome this it helps to spend some time thinking of all that God has done for us throughout our lives, and to make acts of thanksgiving.  The Prophets regularly reminded the people in very specific terms of how he had saved their fathers and ancestors, so that surely they could trust God to save them from the powerful kingdoms that threatened them at that time.  Spending quiet time before the Blessed Sacrament also helps.  Basking in the glow of his humility and glory, he holds us in his arms and comforts us in our need.  We have also the example and prayers of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and of the saints.  And we ought to often think of heaven and the eternal safety and abundance of every good thing which we shall enjoy there, if we follow God and reject Mammon.