25th Sunday of Ordinary Time

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been discussing the need for breathing room with you. Breathing room is the gap or space in our lives between our pace of life and our physical, emotional, and spiritual limits. All of us have limits on our time, emotions, money, and mental energy. It is good to push our boundaries occasionally. Situations can develop when we have to make a sacrifice and move out of our comfort zone to help others or experience new things, but we can’t always be living on the edge. It isn’t healthy to constantly be pushing our limits. Life is better when we have breathing room. Life is more enjoyable when we have at least a little time to relax, take a deep breath and enjoy our surroundings and the people important to us. 

Sadly, our current culture wants to push us beyond our limits, and it wants us to use all of our available resources all the time. Culture pressures us to use all our time, energy, and money until we are beyond the margins and feel entirely depleted. If we want to create breathing room in our lives, we need to work to get it. We have to fight for it, and we need to plan for it regularly. 

When I started this series of homilies two weeks ago, I asked you to count the cost of adding more and more to your life. You might remember the Gospel passage for that day was Jesus’ parable of the man who set out to build a tower. Jesus said the man needed to estimate the project’s cost so that it could be completed once begun. The builder would become the victim of ridicule if he started the tower and couldn’t finish his task. When we take on added responsibilities, we must ensure that we can complete them without sacrificing our current ones. 

Last week I focused on the parable of the Prodigal Son. The son thought he could handle life on his own, and he felt he didn’t need his father’s support. While on his own, he got himself overextended and without any breathing room. We humans aren’t created to bear our burdens alone, and we need God’s grace and the help of a community. The son finally comes to his senses and makes the long journey home to reconnect with his father. The reality of that truth has been impressed on us these last few years during the COVID pandemic. Isolation has taken a heavy toll on many people. If you feel overwhelmed and need breathing room, come to your senses. Realize life doesn’t have to be like this, and God and the Church are here to help. If you or people you know are feeling isolated, reach out; reconnecting with your faith family is essential. Reach out to God in prayer and receive God’s Grace in the sacraments here at church. 

Today, I’d like to talk about money and our financial margin. Relax, even though we are amid our Capital Campaign, there will not be an ask at the end of this homily. I will be talking about money not because I want something from you but because I want something for you. Many of us live on a certain percentage of our income. It might be 80, 90, 100, or even 120% of our income. If we are living on 80% of our income, we can save and share some. We have some breathing room. If we live at the limit of our income or beyond it, we are taking on debt. We can’t borrow more time or better health, but the thing about money is we can borrow more of it, which is the problem. Unless we are intentional about our money, we can’t resist the urge and pressures from our culture to spend more. We will quickly find ourselves without breathing room with our finances.

Resisting the temptation to move beyond our financial limits is difficult because every day, advertising tries to feed us with the misconception that our standard of living equals our quality or satisfaction with life.  It tells us the good life is constantly consuming more. We are fed constantly with claims that if we buy the newest, fastest, and shiniest things, the quality of and our satisfaction with life will increase. Intellectually we know that isn’t true. We know that relationships, love, and being of service to others are the keys to happiness and satisfaction, but the bombardment of advertising dulls our senses. We too easily surrender to the quest for more. 

Our culture repeatedly tells us that if we had just a little more, we would be fine, and we know that is a lie because we have experienced getting more and then feeling the need for even more after that. The truth is that the more economic resources we have, the more we think we need. You may have gotten to the point where you were experiencing the American dream but still felt more financial pressures than when you were young and struggling.                         

God has a message for us in today’s Gospel if we live beyond our means. When we first listen to Jesus’ parable of the unfaithful steward, it is very confusing. The unfaithful steward is about to lose his job and finds himself in desperate need of breathing room because his options are limited. He has an "Ah-Ha" moment. He will use his master’s money to make friends and provide breathing room for himself. 

Surprisingly, when he hears of the steward’s behavior, the master praises him for his prudence. He isn’t praising his honesty but his wherewithal with money. Jesus tells us that God wants us to be wise with material things, not because He wants something from us, but for you. Jesus tells His disciples that God doesn’t want us to feel consumed by money and our possessions. 

In today’s parable, Jesus suggests three conclusions. Luke quotes Jesus, “Make friends for yourself with dishonest wealth, so that when it fails, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.” Jesus is telling us we should invest money by giving to others. That isn’t my focus for today, but it is important to remember. 

Then Jesus says, “The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones.” Here Jesus is putting money into perspective. He says money is small when we compare it to the work of salvation but be faithful with it, and you will get more critical responsibilities, and you will progress down the path of salvation.

Then He makes His most important point: “No servant can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You can not serve God and mammon.” If we have two conflicting pulls on us, if two things stretch our limits, we will give in to one or the other. If we get overextended and fall into debt, our money worries will start to consume us. It becomes our master and not God. Rather than working for the coming of the Kingdom, we are working for the bank or credit card company. 

Leaving ourselves with no financial breathing room robs us of our joy and hope and strains our relationships. We become more selfish and unwilling to give because we focus on our debt and other financial pressures. Without financial breathing room, we can’t devote ourselves to a relationship with God. When we try to pray, our money worries distract us. We feel we lack time to enter into a relationship with God because we are too busy trying to make money to keep the wolf from the door. 

When it comes to money, we have three choices. They are: live beyond our means, live on our means, or live beneath your means. Any idea where God wants you to live? God made a big investment to be able to call you God’s son or daughter. God sacrificed His only begotten son for us so we could be God’s children. Where do you want your children to live? I’m certain you want your children to live beneath their means. You want your children to have some financial breathing room so they don’t worry about money. You would like them to live with financial breathing room so they can enjoy life without constant financial pressure. You want them to be able to have the breathing room for a relationship with God. 

If money is your master, it is time to start weaning yourself away and strengthen your relationship with God, the master who gives us all good gifts. It is time to build your relationship with God, who wants you to have breathing room to enjoy the gift of life. Start living on a budget, and destroy those extra credit cards. Start carving out breathing room so you can devote yourself to serving God and not mammon.