Make Friends for yourselves

Intro

The Gospel of today reminds me of the beginning to Jerry Maguire. You’re being fired, you gotta retain your clients, so what do you do? You cut corners, you make promises, and you look for friends. What did he do with his final moments of employment? He was trying to make deals.

Sunday

See, in the Gospel Christ asked if you can be trusted with true wealth? We’d all say, sure, I’m trustworthy.

Well good, because today is the Lord’s day. The first reading had Amos criticizing the Israelites for how they spent their Sabbath.

We Catholics are expected to spend our new Sabbath, Sunday, honoring God. I’ve been contemplating lately how even to be a minimal Christian takes a lot of commitment. Vacation isn’t a good enough excuse to get out of it.

But its all in the quest to answer this question, Who is your master?

Its a good question because our hearts are all over the place and its tough to tell.

So for example, we must worship God on Sunday because

JPII - connected with the core of Christ’s mystery, “the true fulcrum of history, to which the mystery of the world’s origin and its final destiny leads.” - Dies Domini

I can remember Scott Hahn challenging me in seminary with some tough words, give God your Sunday, and see how he takes care of the rest of your weeks!

If you live Sunday wrong, you’ll get the rest wrong, like with your money.

What’s money for?

Jesus tells us that money is for use in honesty, not just to make more of it. And we have to work honestly to get it. Amos reminds us that to greed after more money, on the day that you are supposed to give to God, is a big sin. So they resolve to cheating and adjusting their scales. They are unjust with God, why wouldn’t they be unjust with their neighbors? And this is quite the opposite of what St. Paul writes “lead quiet and tranquil lives with all devotion and dignity.” I(1 Timothy 2)

St. Maximilian said that “we have to use money with caution because it is not our own, but God’s” (letters 181).

Easy for him to say right? Because he grew up poor and then became a poor Franciscan. Well, if being poor and devoted to God can give you the right idea of how to use wealth, well then maybe we shouldn’t be so fond of wealth or at least not so trusting of our use of it.

He even went so far to say that if someone brought money here to solve Niepokalanow’s housing and publishing problems “but did not have the will to be totally and unreservedly consecrated to God and the Immaculata, he cannot be admitted” (Letters, 198).

Winning souls for God

Because, following Christ’s admonition, the more important thing than having more material and mammon is to “make friends with dishonest wealth.”

(Especially the poor, leaving something for them to glean, something in your will so that they will pray for you).

We can look at that as saving souls and bringing souls to love Christ and His Mother, the Immaculata.

More on St. Maximilian, like St. Francis, he required, “the strictest kind of poverty to win the world over to the Immaculata as soon as possible and to make oneself similar to her.” (223)

For what did she say? “God has looked with favor on his lowly handmaiden… lifted up the poor and the rich he has sent away empty.”

He said we have to be totally and unreservedly consecrated to God (Letters, 198) That’s how we get into heaven isn’t it?! with “prayer everywhere, lifting holy hands, not with anger or argumentation.”

And so, make friends with your wealth. You could buy almost anything if you had enough money, but Christ doesn’t want you to make corrupt friends with corrupt means, but friends of Christ with trustworthiness.

Christianity is for the thoughtful and cunning (Doves and Serpents). Make friends, because relationships are like the treasure in heaven that won’t wear out, that will last forever. And friends want to share what’s important to them, and for the saints, its Christ, its only and everywhere Christ. Pope Francis said, “be shrewd in getting into heaven.” (22 Sept. 2019)

St. Matthew’s day and becoming a friend of God

Lastly, I would be remiss in not mentioning one of my patron saints, the patron of accountants, here in this place of one of my favorite saints, on his feast day. St. Matthew was a tax collector. His was also known by Levi, a priestly name, perhaps signifying that his family was of priestly line. But instead of serving in the temple, you could say that he served the idol of the Roman Empire. And Christ becomes his friend. “Matthew, we’re going to your house tonight!” He gives Matthew a second chance, come be my priest, come to my Church. Perhaps he is like the opposite of St. Max, both growing up in a somewhat enemy occupied homeland, but not choosing to be devout, to instead of conquering the world for God, chose to collect taxes from his own to give to the enemy. He did the opposite of making friends with his wealth, he made enemies. But Christ got him straightened out. Just like St. Paul who had more ambition than truth Christ breaks in. Who knows what happened to Levi’s wealth. But I did have the chance to see Carravagio’s three paintings of St. Matthew and it shows him being slain in priestly vestments.