Homily for the Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

September 21, 2025

I came across this anonymous story… A man spoke with the Lord about heaven and hell. “I will show you hell,” said the Lord, and they went into a room which had a large pot of stew in the middle. The smell was delicious, but around the pot sat desperate people who were starving. All were holding spoons with very long handles which reached into the pot, but because the handle of the spoon was longer than their arm, it was impossible to get the stew into their mouths. Their suffering was terrible.

“Now I will show you heaven,” said the Lord, and they went into another room identical to the first one. There was a similar pot of delicious stew and the people had the same long-handled spoons, but they were well-nourished, talking and happy. At first the man did not understand. “It is simple,” said the Lord. “You see, they have learned to feed each other.”

In today’s gospel Jesus says, “No servant can serve two masters. He will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and mammon.”

I think the key word for us to take a look at is the last one, mammon. Mammon has to do with money, riches and possessions. What is most important is what mammon can do to you: it can make you greedy, blind you to the needs of others, and lead to consumerism, a preoccupation with material goods. Taken to the extreme, money and material goods can become an idol, having god-like power over individuals.

In the story about heaven and hell, it would appear that those in hell are self-centered, locked in on themselves. They have never found the beauty of sharing, or of caring about the needs of other people. They try only to feed themselves; those around them don’t seem to matter. Perhaps the worst thing that has happened to them is that they have become indifferent to the needs of others. It is self-survival at any cost.

In one of his stories, Jesus remarks that where our treasure is, that’s where our heart will lie. Let’s ask ourselves: What am I most concerned about? What gets my attention? What makes me angry? What makes me happy?

Our coming regularly to Church is important because we get a steady diet of what Jesus considers important. He invites us, not just to learn about him, but to grow in a relationship with him, so that we can become more like him. This doesn’t happen over-night, and it’s not a once-in-awhile kind of thing. Most of the time, we are living in the world, listening to its values, becoming concerned about what other people tell us we should be concerned about. We have 184 hours each week, and we give one of those hours to our time together in worship. That 183 vs.1! To be realistic, does Jesus then have a chance? Can he become our guide, our teacher, our hero, the heart of our life?

There are very clever commercials that are meant to buy in to the values they are selling. For example, there are Capital One ads that always end with the question, “What’s in your wallet?” Well, today’s Gospel asks a question that goes deeper than that: What’s in your heart? Or better, who’s in your heart? Have you let God in? Have you given God a chance? Or, have you shut God out?