“For a quick check on your heart,” someone has wisely counseled, “look into your checkbook.” In the precarious movie industry, actor Paul Newman has managed to remain a super-star for a long time. He is a man who has developed all his personal gifts to the full. His many fans throughout the world will attest to this point. In addition, he has enthusiastically lived verse 9 of today’s Gospel. “Use your worldly wealth to win friends for yourselves, so that when money is a thing of the past, you may be received into an eternal home.” Mr Newman has given away more than ten million dollars to various charitable causes. Additionally, he sponsors a camp for youngsters who are terminally ill. Sixteen hundred sick children receive a summer holiday in the country courtesy of the actor. This venture has cost him additional millions. Billy Graham might have Paul Newman in mind when he said, “God has given us two hands – one to receive with and the other to give with.” If anyone is following the admonition of psalm 113, vs 7-8, it is Newman. “He raises up the lowly from the dust; from the dunghill he lifts up the poor to seat them with princes…” The next few sentences from this preacher will come as a surprise to no one. Just as Newman is generous with the gifts that God has given to him, so should we Catholics. We need not be as lavish as he is. Yet, would it not be wonderful if proportionate to our wealth, whether large or small, we were?
Please note I am speaking today not about giving to your parish but rather giving to charities across the board. I think of those that especially relieve the burdens of the poor. Verse 9 of today’s Gospel may well have inspired the epitaph found on an English grave. “What I kept I lost. What I spent I had. What I gave I have.” We might do well to reflect from time to time on this message from the Talmud while we still have the time. “We are born with our hands clenched. We die with our hands open. Entering life we desire to grasp everything. Leaving the world all that we possess slips away.” But, brothers and sister, a Gallup poll recently revealed bad news about us. Catholic households contribute on average less money to charities than members of all other religious groups in the United States. There are no pockets in burial shrouds nor armored cars in funeral processions. Still the majority of us are convinced we can somehow take our money out with us into the next life.
Unhappily far too many of us possess what are called deep pockets and short arms. After all, even the pagan Greeks considered the poor “the ambassadors of the gods.” Can we Christians and Catholics, who profess to follow the Poor Man of Nazareth, consider them less? Who was it who said that the hardening of the heart ages people more quickly than hardening of the arteries? The advice of St John Chrysostom should be taken more seriously by us. God never condemned anyone for not enriching our churches with magnificent furniture. However, He does threaten with hell those who do not give to the poor. Chrysostom might well have had today’s verse 9 in mind or of course the famous Matthew 25, 31-46. Verse 13 instructs us today: “No servant can serve two masters…You cannot give yourself to God and mammon.” With the advice of the Teacher in mind, many of us do attempt to somehow straddle the fence between God and mammon. We are very similar to the man who lived smack on the Mason-Dixon line during the United States Civil War. He did not want to choose sides. So, he wore a Union jacket and Confederate pants. But, unhappily for him, the Union soldiers shot at his pants. And the Confederates shot at his jacket. Like it or no, we must choose sides. If we opt for the poor, we will discover a wonderful thing happening to us. When love opens the heart, writes one observer, we will find it will also open our hand too. Recall the aphorism that teaches money can be your master or your servant.