Memorial of Saint Leo the Great, pope and doctor of the Church
In the reading from Luke’s Gospel today, Jesus exhorts His disciples to keep money in its place. It’s interesting, in light of the eventual sharp contrast between God and mammon, that Jesus begins by talking about trust, and a rather common sense notion at that. If people cannot be trusted on small matters, we certainly don’t trust them with more important ones! (Lk 16:10-2). The key here is that money is not of the essence, at best it’s an instrument toward something, certainly not an end in itself, a small matter.
Notice that Jesus fully expects that money will not endure; it will not ultimately provide any measure of security; it will fail. Our security lies in God alone. Of course, this does not mean that we should be careless—exactly the opposite! How we spend out money reflects who we are. It reflects whether or not we can be trusted to inherit God’s Kingdom. Jesus knows that our smallest decisions betray our ultimate loyalties. If we profess belief in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, if we are members of Christ’s body, the Church, our financial decisions should clearly reflect that.
Many of our parish reflections on discipleship over the past year or so have brought to light the question concerning the consistency of our entire lives. Thinking about discipleship has especially posed to us the following question: How do we continue to strive to allow Christ’s light to illuminate everything that we do? One of the many ways we can do that is to allow the light of Christ to shine on our financial decisions: What do we buy? How was it produced? What companies do we invest in? For, if we cannot be trusted to use our money justly, how can we be trusted with heavenly reward?
As St. Benedict, the founder of monasticism in the West, has famously written: every decision we make is a decision either for or against God. Let our use of money speak of our love of God, so that we may counted among the blessed who are “gracious, merciful, and just” (Ps 112:4).
- Tim Gabrielli