Sermon CXXII.
Religion For Week-days.
No man can serve two masters. …
You cannot serve God and Mammon.
—Gospel of the Day.
What does our Lord mean by this, my brethren? "No man," he says, "can serve two masters." "Why," you might perhaps answer, "I do not see any difficulty about serving two masters. What is to prevent a man, for instance, after his regular hours of work are over, from hiring himself out for the evenings to some other employer, if he has strength enough to spare? Or, if he can make such an arrangement, why should he not work for one in the morning, and another in the afternoon? And are there not, in fact, many people, teachers, for example, who give private lessons, who have a great number of employers whom they agree to serve at stated times?"
Yes, this seems true enough. It seems so true that I believe there are many people who, in spite of our Lord's statement to the contrary, divide their service between God and Mammon. They hire themselves out to the devil, or at least to the world during the week, and when Sunday comes round, and they put on their good clothes, they change their master at the same time, and, at least for the time that they are in church, read certain words out of their prayer-books, in which they offer their service to God. And they do not appear to think that there is anything strange about this. They think that, of course, decency requires that God should want part of their time for his service, and that he is quite reasonable in only asking for one day out of seven; but that he should have any claim on them during the part of the week that he does not specially reserve does not seem to occur to their minds. That is the time engaged to the other master—that is, to their worldly interests or pleasures. They find no difficulty in reconciling the service of God and Mammon at all; they can be good Christians and also men of the world like others without the slightest trouble.
But I seem to hear some one say, "Father, are you not pushing this matter rather too far? Surely one cannot be in church or saying his prayers at home all the week. Some people may find time to come to early Mass and all the devotions, and live what you may call a pious life generally; but I have to go to my business or my family will starve. What would you have me do?"
Well, I will tell you. I do not find fault with any one for attending to his business during the week, and working as much as he is obliged to provide for himself and his family properly; but I must say, by the way, that many people, under this excuse, fall into the snare of avarice, and work early and late to hoard up riches which neither they nor their family need, and which, left to their children, is only too likely to be an occasion of sin. However, I repeat, no one is to be blamed for attending to the proper duties of his state of life; for working at his business, if it is a legitimate and useful one. But what one is to be blamed for is for attending to it as if, instead of being God's business, as it ought to be, it was no business of his at all; as if he had nothing to say about it, and his laws did not apply to it. The delusion that too many Christians are under is that their religious life and their life in the world are entirely separate concerns; that religion, morality, God's laws in general, have nothing to do with politics, business, buying or selling, or what they call practical affairs. They say, If we did not do as others do about these things, we could not get on at all; so they calmly take for granted, even, perhaps, in the confessional, that such things have no moral aspect whatever.
This is a great delusion and a fatal blunder. A Christian has got to be a Christian first, last, and all the time; one cannot be a Catholic on Sunday, and to all intents and purposes a Protestant or an infidel during the week. If you can't get on on the principle of serving God and trying to find out and do his will on Monday as well as on Sunday, then all I have to say is, "Don't get on." I dare say there is some truth in your complaint; a man who manages his business and daily life generally, as if there was no God in the world, will probably make money faster, and have in some ways a better time, than one will who believes in God and tries to do his will. Very well, then, if you prefer this world to the next, act according to its standard Sunday, Monday, and all the time; but don't try to cut inside of it and get a pass to heaven on the ground that you have used another standard now and then.