SERVING TWO MASTERS

A MESSAGE FOR THE 14th SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Life is all about making choices.  Some of them are easy to make, others may take a good deal of consideration before we're able to make up our mind which path to take.  The greatest choice we make in this life, however, should be a simple one.  God asks us to decide whether we prefer to love and serve him by obeying his commandments, so that we can spend eternity in unimaginable happiness; or whether we would rather just do what we want whenever we want, so that we can enjoy the fleeting joys and pleasures of this short life, followed by an eternity of pain and suffering.

Such a simple choice should be made willingly and enthusiastically, one would think, by every man and woman in this world.  And yet, so many lost millions of souls choose the latter, and grasp at those trivial pleasures that come and go so quickly and take us so far from the God who loves us.

The reason so many make such a foolish choice is that they try and "have their cake and eat it."  It is common in the modernist churches today to overstress the mercy of God, while ignoring any notion of his justice.  "Don't worry!" they seem  to be saying, "it doesn't matter if you sin.  You can always go to confession, and even if you don't, God is a forgiving God, and he'll just take you straight up to heaven when you die anyway."  This is, alas, so far from the truth that these poor souls who trust in this dangerous and false doctrine, and who are daily led astray by it, will one day wake up to find themselves judged by that merciful God to an eternity of hell fire.

Even traditional Catholics sometimes seem oblivious to the idea of God's justice.  They think they can miss Mass on Sunday with impunity, that it simply doesn't matter whether they obey God's commandment to keep holy the Sabbath day or not.  So many of our own faithful are so often missing from our Sunday Mass.  Where are we, what are we doing, what is so important as to keep us away from our Catholic duty of attending Mass?  The saddest question of all is what does this tell us about our love of God.  "If ye love me, ye will keep my commandments," said our Lord, and yet we break his commandments with so little thought.  Is this how we know God, love God, and serve God?  Or do we serve Mammon, the pagan idol of pleasure and self-indulgence?  It's time to think about this and make our choice!