A Poignant Homily

“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth." Matthew 6:24

"For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs." 1 Timothy 6:10

Doug and I went to mass on Saturday night and found the homily given by the deacon to be extremely relevant.  He talked of greed, misery and idolizing one's money over everything else including God.  We both walked away from the sermon touched, but with different thoughts.  I felt that the deacon was affirming our decision to help our children start their lives by paying for their college educations.  The stress of Doug's job and the decommitment of his family to help with that expense had really taken a toll on us these past few years and my mind had started to drift away from what was important and focused instead on wealth and hoarding money for "someday."  I had even started to wonder if we should have had them be partially financially responsible for their expenses as well.  I was afraid that we had robbed from our retirement to support them.  We hadn't and I was glad that the deacon reminded us today that Jesus asked us to forgo riches and to let go of earthly idolatry.  He was right and I knew that.  Doug and I were able to help our children start their lives and still live comfortably ourselves.  The most important part of raising them wasn't money, but to give them richness in faith.  This summer, I realized that we had done exactly that, and we had reaped the benefits of following the Jesus' teachings.  

Doug completely agreed with my thoughts, but he had never doubted that we had made the right decision all along.  His thoughts were deeper than mine as he contemplated his family's legacy, the promises that had been made to him years ago and what that meant for our future.  He brought up legitimate concerns, but did not have a solution for any of them.  The nice reminder for him Saturday was that we had learned long ago to only rely on each other.  We had weathered many storms together through God's help and the hardships of the past two years were slowly becoming a memory.

I appreciated Doug's opinion today.  He doesn't talk as much as I do, so it was nice to hear that we were on the same page with our own decisions.  When he went to bed tonight, I thought a lot about our upbringings.  They were so different from each other. My grandparents lived on a fixed income and worked commodities to bring home government peanut butter and cheese.  They had nothing to leave me but a case of Halloween Miller Lite beer and some knickknacks that I absolutely cherished.  His grandparents owned farmland that was now worth millions of dollars that they wanted their grandsons to inherit.  I hope that one day the boys are allowed to be owners of something that was so precious to their family.  The nice part is that no matter what happens, Doug and I both loved our respective grandparents dearly and had wonderful memories of them.  That's enough for me.