The Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time (2025)
There is a well-known phrase that is often used as a sort of “proof text” against the vice of greed: “You cannot love both God and money.”
At the surface, God and money aren’t incompatible. In fact, Saint Augustine even encouraged people to provide for their eternal happiness by using the goods of the earth (cf. Discourses 359, 10). But the Parable of the Dishonest Steward that we just heard, from which this saying is adapted, doesn’t use the word “money” (although “money” is in certain popular translations of Scripture). Rather, the word used by Jesus in the parable is “mammon,” a [Phoenician] term for economic security and success in business.
Reflecting on this idea of mammon, Pope Benedict XVI said, “we might say that riches are shown as the idol to which everything is sacrificed in order to attain one’s own material success; hence, this economic success becomes a person’s true god.”
More than just making an indictment of material wealth, this Sunday’s Gospel is speaking out against those who have made financial security an idol—a god—that they are willing to serve at any cost. This is what we hear the Prophet Amos condemning in this Sunday’s First Reading:
Hear this, you who trample upon the needy
and destroy the poor of the land!
“When will the new moon be over,” you ask,
“that we may sell our grain,
and the sabbath, that we may display the wheat?
We will diminish the ephah,
add to the shekel,
and fix our scales for cheating!
We will buy the lowly for silver,
and the poor for a pair of sandals;
even the refuse of the wheat we will sell!”
Amos is condemning merchants who have had to stop buying and selling in order to observe religious holidays, but they are spending their time anticipating when they can not only go back to conducting business, but they are scheming how they can take advantage of the poor. And here, “the poor of the land” refers to those people who were landless; because they had no land of their own, they were not able to harvest their own crop and so were dependent on merchants to provide the grain and wheat for food. These are the people who were frequently brought to such extremes that they were forced to sell themselves into slavery in order to survive… These are the people who were victimized by the scheming merchants to whom this oracle of judgment is addressed.
There is within certain Christian groups a movement that espouses a theology that is often referred to as the “prosperity gospel” or “health and wealth gospel.” Essentially, this theology understands the Bible as a contract between God and humanity. And, in this view, if we have faith in God, God will, in turn, grant security and prosperity to the faithful. Alongside the financial dimensions of this theology is the belief that health is also a benefit of faith, with sickness, poverty, and disappointment being a sort of punishment for infidelity.
But this way of thinking forgets—it ignores—the fact that God is the God of the poor. Christ came among us for the sake of the poor, the sick, the alienated, and for all sinners. Any ideology that presents God as favoring only the wealthy and healthy denies the reality of a God whose love for creation is so dynamic that it became incarnate in Jesus, “who gave himself as a ransom for all” (1 Timothy 2:6).
Christians can never embrace any ideology that is opposed to a spirit of poverty or authentic generosity. The Readings for this Twenty-Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time invite us to reflect on how we see ourselves in relation to others—do we see others as a means for our advancement and security, or are we willing to invest in others and put our wealth and resources to the best possible use?
In other words, the Readings challenge us to evaluate our stewardship of the gifts that have been entrusted to us by God and by society.
The dishonest steward in the Gospel used his power to ensure his own safety and security; by focusing solely on his own welfare, he had sacrificed his integrity and humanity at the altar of Mammon. We are called to do and to be more. And even though it isn’t one of the Readings assigned for this Sunday’s celebration, I think we would do well to recall these words from the First Letter of Peter: "Above all, let your love for one another be intense, because love covers a multitude of sins. Be hospitable to one another without complaining. As each one has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God's varied grace" (1 Peter 4:8-10).
O God, who founded all the commands of your sacred Law
upon love of you and of our neighbor,
grant that, by keeping your precepts,
we may merit to attain eternal life.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever. Amen.
-Collect for the Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Homily prepared for the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, Milwaukee, Wiscons
