HOMILY PRONOUNCED BY MSGR. DIEGO MONROY PONCE; GENERAL AND EPISCOPAL VICAR OF GUADALUPE, RECTOR OF THE SANCTUARY.
ORDINARY XXV SUNDAY

Sunday, September 23th of 2007

SERVING GOD WITH MONEY IN THE RIGHT RELATIONS

Dear brothers: we can not stop praising and blessing God our Father, great and generous Lord who is rich in mercy and kindness; He shares with us the abundance of His goods because of His infinite mercy and love through faith, hope and love, in order to be like Him, rich in mercy and love towards the ones that have less.  Brothers, we have been called to reproduce the image of His Son in ourselves, the Son who became everything for everybody to unite us with Him through His cross and resurrection. 

The last Sunday we meditated on the gratuitous thing of everything what God gives us for our spiritual and human benefit from now that we are on the way towards the promised mother country. We also see how the mercy is the an own characteristic of the God in who we believe, the one that has made us know our older brother, His Son Jesus Christ through His sacrifice in the cross, incomparable expression of His love for us.

Today, the readings speak again about mercy, but specifically in its aspect of justice. The last Sunday we said that in the biblical language, mercy is synonymous of solidarity, it means that it is an effective disposition to help authentic and generously to whom have less. My brothers, I emphasize the authentic mercy, because in the present time some helps are given through systems  are totally vitiated that are not other thing that appearance of solidarity and that are called frequently “philanthropy”.

Let us analyze what the biblical readings from today say to us, and let us listen to the warnings that the prophet Amos does like the same Jesus in the Gospel of Saint Luke.

At a time of prosperity of the town of Israel, the prophet Amos indicates the vices in which the prosperous Jews incur in spite of they believe that they are very religious. In fact, the prophet speaks about “a compassionate hypocrisy” because the retailers show a great interest to observe the rule of Saturday, but with anxiety, because they see it like a hindrance for their gains. They wish it happens soon to continue their commercial activity which is characterized by a ruthless greed. They jus look for the benefit, it can be through the fraud, the increase of prices (what today we called “conjecture”), bad quality of the products; taking advantage of the indebted poor men to buy them as slaves, etc. 

My dear brothers, this God’s word, unfortunately it seems that it portrays the situation that we are living world-wide; but this situation is affecting us, as Mexicans, a very catholic town. We are verifying it daily; but specially we are suffering it in these days as a sad evidence of this situation from the announcement about the increase of two cents monthly in fuels; if it is like this, at least they should take care of that the liters of gasoline or of the gas are of liter and with the weight and of right measures that are congruent with the purchase.

With this pretext the prices of everything, beginning by the bread our traditional bolillo, has been increased in a wild way in prejudice of the poor men. Meanwhile, the political parties instead of being against this disorder, they only politicize the economic measurement and they try to take advantage with their rejections.   

The worst thing of all this irrational and immoral behavior is that all of us that are called Catholics practice it.  Do we know the Gospel and its exigencies? Does we know what the divine declaration, that was expressed by the prophet, means: I want mercy, and I do not want sacrifices (Os 4,2,6,6) It is not good just to give alms, to undertake philanthropic actions in order to found patronages or administrations “to help” if there are not right commercial and labor relations. Is not this compassionate hypocrisy? My dear brothers, there is not respect neither for God nor for the human being.

The prophet finishes his oracle indicating that God will ask accounts to who have became rich in an illicit and unjust way (v.7) but Jesus goes further on. He warns us of that the money that we look for its own value is tyranny and slavery, and worse, it is idolatry because it becomes a rival of God. As we are seeing, the Lord is very direct in this topic (and much more than in other topics that we like to say with a lot of facility to condemn, like the case of the sexual sins). He is very repetitive. It is not the unique case in which He speaks about the topic; let us see the sermon of the mountain (Mt 5-7). Jesus teaches us that we have to do a radical option before God and before money: nobody can serve two Lords...; the lord says as His summary of His teaching: You can not serve God and money.

My dear brothers, this topic is very difficult, and it can open to long and discussions and controversies, to false reasoning; but today, we have listened to it as a Word of God. How can we, as faithful believers, receive it with gratitude, joy and optimism, to become it life daily in our familiar, labor, social and cultural relations?

My brothers, it is not about believing that money and the material goods are things of the devil. Jesus does not do it. If we can make of the money an idol, we also can use it to establish relations of brotherhood, of solidarity, justice in love. Money is also able to build; it gives us the opportunity to share and to create a more egalitarian society. It is not simply about giving it, because this action opens the opportunity to manipulate who it is given. It is not question of giving or not giving, it is about how and with what intentions we give it. There are donations that try to tie; there are other donations that are made to exhibit the image before the society, or simply to silence the conscience.

To understand this exigency of Jesus, with all its depth, it is only possible if there is a true conversion of the heart and of the mind. Only the person that has been born of God, discovers the true value of the material things and he puts them to the service of who have less, and this has occurred in those that have been baptized, and it is kept in those that listen to the Word every Sunday, and in the ones that nourish themselves with His body and His blood! Dear brothers, let us realize the great responsibility that we acquire when we attend and participate in the brotherly table of the Eucharist of every Sunday. We can not leave from it without a sincere desire to share, to help, to serve the others, even with our own goods.

May our little girl and  mother, our Lady and model of total service to man, obtain the Spirit from Her Son that we need to be wise and coherent in our pursuit of Jesus. Amen.