Let Us Pray! – To be souls filled with God Renounce all things Be attentive to God Lovers of the Cross Docility to the Holy Spirit – So that all things may be renewed Prayer – To be true servants of God Fidelity in the little things – May the designs of God be fulfilled Faith in the action of Providence Prayer and Penance Adoration of Jesus Host – To live in intimacy with God The reading of the Gospel – May God’s Kingdom come! Prayer – To hasten the hour of salvation for the Church and the world Invitation to fight – May God find these generous souls Be true – With grace and truth Patience – Graciously! Do violence to ourselves – To attain holiness The summit of Adoration No one can serve two masters The anguish of God What is most pleasing to God Aging is a Grace Secret of Happiness – The Beatitudes The true essence of the Holy Church of Jesus Christ ADVENT Prepare the Way of the Lord ADVENT Prepare the Coming of Jesus ADVENT Awaken Thy Power, O Lord, and come! CHRISTMAS Beside the manger CHRISTMAS He came unto His own and His own received Him not… EASTER Jesus, Light of the World Purgatory, an instrument of Divine Mercy A page from the Gospel – Jesus lost and found in the Temple The Feast of the Visitation and of the Magnificat The Assumption of the Virgin Mary The Secret of the Rosary Mary, Mother of God and our Mother Glorious Saint Joseph, our Model Saint Michael the Archangel, Champion of Humility

No one can serve two

masters

by Father Mathurin of the Mother of God Dear brothers and sisters, I would like to comment with you on several sentences from today’s Gospel. Jesus begins with these words: “No one can serve two masters...” Now, we might ask ourselves, “What is a master?” For students, a master is someone who teaches, who forms the mind; it is someone who orients us and who we adhere to. For everyone, a master is someone who conveys what he knows to someone else. A master is also someone who professes a certain discipline, a particular lifestyle, and who attaches disciples to himself so that they will follow him. A master can also be someone we model ourselves on. We look at a certain person and say, “There is my master, my model.” “No one can serve two masters,” Our Lord tells us today in the Gospel. We must, on the one hand, put the Master with a capital “M” — the great Master — and on the other hand, all the other masters, and know that we cannot serve both at once. It is impossible. Jesus is categorical. Sometimes we would like to succeed in the acrobatics of serving the two at the same time. No one can do it, “or else he will hate the one and love the other, or he will stand bv the one and despise the other.” It is impossible for our heart, our intelligence, all our faculties to be in the service of two masters at the same time. Father Theodore Ratisbonne says, “Man, who is made to love, is never without a master. And the master of a man is the object he loves, that captivates his heart.” Who is my master? It is the object that captivates my heart. Who is the master of each one of you? It is the object that captivates your heart. That is your master! If a person is not attached to God, the great Master, he is necessarily attached to something else — to objects, persons, ideas, a situation, a position, material things — and all these things become his master, become his god! Man becomes an idolater. A few moments ago we mentioned that a master is also someone who conveys laws, a discipline, to someone else. If our master is not God, if we have another master besides Him, then necessarily we follow the laws, the discipline of that master, that is, the laws of the world, the discipline of the world. Now, as Saint John the Apostle says, “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” This way of speaking seems rather negative, but it is truly the Gospel. Jesus is a master, the great Master! And after He has told us that no one can sei've two masters, He concludes today’s text with this sentence, which is a real gem: “Seek first the kingdom of God and His justice, and all the rest shall be given you besides.” It is our great Master’s secret to act as though He is demolishing everything, and when everything is demolished, He makes His own masterpiece. But we must begin by what appears negative to us.

God alone can fill our heart

We know Saint Augustine’s sentence well: “You have made us for Thee, O Lord, and our heart groans in unceasing agitation as long as it does not seek in Thee its nourishment, its repose.” Where is the person who has not experienced the truth of this sentence at one moment or another, or for long moments? We are created for God, and the heart of man groans, it is in unceasing agitation, as long as he does not seek in God his nourishment, his repose... as long as Jesus does not become HIS Master. “No one can serve two masters...” We must not forget this. If we love the things of the world, Jesus is not our master. “Or else he will love the one and hate the other...” says the Gospel. This is the Gospel word in all its power; it is not a word invented by churchmen, but the very Word of God! And it is an awesome word! To the degree that the love of created things insinuates itself in us, the love of God diminishes and we begin to withdraw from Him, detest all that has to do with His service. We have all known people who, having made a profession of serving God, were walking on the right road, and at a given moment fell into a disaster, a catastrophe. These souls seemed to love God, but they turned away from Him and became His enemies. Whatever happened?... We can be certain, my brothers and sisters, that such reversals do not just happen from one day to the next. The heart was divided between God and the world, and the inevitable occurred. “No one can serve two masters.” We must believe it; we must convince ourselves of it and make a serious examination of conscience. God does not admit division, He is a jealous God! He wants all our attention, all our affection, all our energies, all our powers to be oriented toward Him. And rightly so! He is the One who has given us all that we possess; everything that is in us belongs to Him. When we turn from Him and prefer anything whatsoever to Him – personal ideas, material goods, people – we offend God; we serve a double master. Jesus says elsewhere in the Gospel, “He who is not with Me is against Me.” If we are not 100% for God, we are against Him. And the Apocalypse warns us, “Because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth.” Sometimes we try to be jugglers in the spiritual realm. You know what a juggler is? He is a talented individual who successfully performs all sorts of stunts with balls, hoops or other objects; he does acrobatics. Sometimes we do this with God. We want to perform acrobatics! We want to serve Him, and we want to serve others at the same time. That is the most dangerous illusion of all!

What is driving the Church to ruin

My brothers and sisters, what is it that brought about the decadence of the Church? Why are there so few real Christians? Real ones! Why are saints so rare? The answer is in today’s Gospel. We do not take Our Lord’s words seriously: “No one can serve two masters.” We tell ourselves, “Yes, these words are strong... but even so, let’s not exaggerate.” Jesus knew very well the power of words, and He used these words. “No one can serve two masters.” We are all condemned by these words to varying degrees. It is not because someone is preaching that he is any better than others. We condemn ourselves first of all. We must condemn ourselves if we want the grace of God to come into us. But once again, why has the Church sunk so low? Because saints are lacking, that category of people who do not play, who do not waver between God and the other masters, but who give themselves entirely to God. That is what the Good Lord expects of His children: the total gift. In the same line of thought, there is a rather striking event related in the Old Testament. God appeared to Joshua, and after giving him directives that he and his people were to follow faithfully for the next seven days, He assured him of victory, that is, the fall of Jericho. God concluded His instructions with these words: “When they give a long blast on the trumpet and you hear that signal, all the people shall shout aloud; and the walls of the city will collapse.” Joshua and his combatants executed the Lord’s commands to the letter. On the seventh day, Joshua said to the people, “Now shout, for the Lord has given you the city!... All silver and gold, and articles of bronze or iron, are sacred to the Lord. They shall be put into the treasury of the Lord.” The war cry was raised, the trumpets sounded, and at once the walls came tumbling down and the sons of Israel stormed in and took the city. From Jericho, Joshua then sent troops against Hai, but in spite of their numbers, the combatants fled lamentably before the men of Hai. “The confidence of the people melted away like water,” says the Bible. Plunged in desperation, Joshua and the elders of Israel fell prostrate upon the ground before the Axk, imploring God until evening. And the Lord said to Joshua, “Israel has sinned; they have violated the covenant which I enjoined upon them. They have stealthily taken goods subject to the ban... I will not remain with you unless you remove from among you whoever has incurred the ban.” Early the next morning, Joshua had all the people of Israel come forward tribe by tribe. A certain Achan, of the tribe of Juda, admitted his sin: “I have indeed sinned against the Lord... Among the spoils I saw a beautiful Babylonian mantle, two hundred shekels of silver and a bar of gold; in my greed I took them. They are now hidden in the ground inside my tent.” He returned the stolen objects to Joshua and was punished according to the commandment of God. The army then marched against Hai, and this time it was victorious and took the city rapidly. What a powerful lesson! You see, the whole army was defeated, everyone suffered and lost because of one individual who had appropriated things that belonged to God. His unruly love for material things led him to disobey God’s commands, to cheat. He made a little idol for himself. And we, my brothers and sisters, might we not have any little idols that are setting an obstacle to God’s designs? Why are there so many failures in our life? Sometimes we are tempted to say, “My God, are You abandoning me? What is going on?” We must dig deep! Perhaps in some comer of our heart there is a little idol we do not want to throw out with the trash, the garbage. Sometimes it is not a very big thing... a little idol we cherish, something we have a cult for. Could there be a portion of our heart, our mind, our strength, that we are stealing from God? Saint John said to the early Christians, “Dear children, guard yourselves from idols.” We are not true servants of God inasmuch and as long as we keep a little idol, that little something we are not disposed to sacrifice if such were God’s good pleasure. That is the great obstacle to the love of God.

Do not be anxious…

Further on in today’s Gospel, Jesus says, “Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you of much more value than they?... Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin. Yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which flourishes today but tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more you, O you of little faith! Therefore do not be anxious... for it is the pagans who seek after all these things.” I would like to make a little commentary on these words of Jesus: “Do not be anxious.” Sometimes our lack of confidence stems from our conscience telling us that there are little things we have not given to God; and because of this, we do not have the total, absolute confidence we should have toward God. Interior reproaches remind us that we are not wholly given to God, because we refuse to give Him little things, and sometimes great ones. Our heart is anxious; we are afraid that He is treating us as we ourselves treat Him. The Good Lord is very merciful, very generous, but often we bring Him down to our level. We say, “I am stingy with God. He will certainly be stingy with me.” We must not be anxious, my brothers and sisters, but we must humble ourselves constantly. Besides, no matter what we do, we are always unworthy of God’s graces: they are a free gift of His liberality. Yes, humble ourselves and make sincere resolutions to progress in the love of God: that is the solution. And we must make progress, too. True humility causes us to recognize our faults and makes us want to change, improve and progress. True humility makes us want to draw near to God. Why humility? To draw us near to God. And let us look at the last sentence of today’s Gospel, that tittle gem: “Seek first the kingdom of God and His justice, and all the rest shall be given you besides.” First of all, before everything else, seek the kingdom of God, sacrifice all our idols, give God first place in our life, put the spiritual good before the material. In a word, love God with our whole heart, with our whole soul, and with our whole strength, and our neighbor as ourselves, as He has commanded us to do. Let us do this, and all the rest shall be given us besides, says Jesus. And what is “all the rest”? It is all that we really need in the material realm as well as in the spiritual realm. Let us occupy ourselves with God as He deserves, and His Providence will occupy itself with us, beyond all hope. For those who seek the kingdom of God and His justice, the Holy Spirit comes with “all the rest.” He comes with His gifts, with His fruits, which Saint Paul mentions in today’s epistle: charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, long-suffering, meekness, confidence, modesty, continence, chastity. It is the Holy Spirit who makes saints; He creates them out of nothing. The collaboration, the effort of souls is needed, of course. “The kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and only the violent bear it away,” says Jesus, that is, the work of sanctification cannot be done without effort, and it is not a matter of one day. We must get back to the task each day, with perseverance. “He who has persevered to the end will be saved.” The goal is certainly worth the trouble, it is worth all the troubles in the world.

The great benefactors of humanity

Who are those that have marked and done the most good to humanity, to the people around them? It is the saints, the great missionaries... sometimes missionaries in their convent like Saint Theresa of the Child Jesus, or in a hermitage like Saint Charbel Makhlouf and Blessed Charles de Foucauld. The true servants of God sacrificed themselves, they offered themselves to God every day; they remade their sacrifice each day. And in exchange, God made them saints. They have been the mainstays of the Church, saviors of souls, living models for Christians of every era to emulate. God’s power is not diminished. He can and still wants to make us saints. All He asks of us is our gift without reserve, without calculation. “No one can serve two masters.” This kind of talk hurts us, but the fruits of the Holy Ghost do come; and as you have noticed, one of the fruits is joy, peace. When you have sacrificed everything, when you have exhausted yourself for God, He comes Himself with His joy, His peace, which are not joy and peace according to the world. My brothers and sisters, let us be generous souls who immolate that other master. We must sacrifice it, we must forget it. Let us ask for this grace, through the intermediation of our good Heavenly Mother. May She obtain for us from the Holy Spirit the generosity, the strength to sacrifice that bad master, which may exist within us in varying degrees. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, and of the Mother of God. Amen.