There was a journalist in the mid-twentieth century named Sydney J Harris. He wrote for the Chicago Tribune. He once made a powerful observation. He said, “Men make counterfeit money; in many more cases, money makes counterfeit men.”
Mr. Harris is spot on. Money, when we serve it, has a way of making us forget that we are human. The Catechism says that what makes us human is that we who are made in the image of God are able to share “by knowledge and by love” in the very life of God.
St. Paul says something of the same thing in our second reading today. Saint Augustine summarizes our Christian tradition well in saying that what makes us human is that we able to love; we can will it.
We are capable of loving and that makes us human.
But when we serve money–or power, or prestige, or popularity–we are no longer capable of this kind of love. We are no longer being true to our nature as humans. We are counterfeit people, fakes.
Maybe you have had the experience of watching people fight. It is a horrible thing. Often it is about money, as our Gospel says today and our first reading, too. In the first reading, we find the Prophet Amos, who lived in the northern kingdom of Israel at a time of great economic growth. He is speaking to the rich who trample upon the poor, who cheat them out of money and land and what little they have. They hated the holy days because on those days they couldn’t sell their stuff and carry on their money-making schemes. Amos tells them they are not being human to each other. So obsessed with money and territory, they are trampling upon one another. They are not loving, not being human.
I have a fish tank. In it I have some wonderful fish. But a few of them are a little territorial. One fish has a little cave. Thing is, he doesn’t like to share. The sucker fish sometimes like to go over there and clean up his house, but he bites and jabs them. He chases them and bullies them. He refuses to act civilly, to be flexible with his timetable, to allow for another to share in his life.
I can excuse him. He is a fish. But humans who act the same way?
In Msgr’s absence this past week, I think I anointed ten people. Life is short. Let’s be good to each other. Let’s be human to each other, lest we be counterfeit men.
First, we remember today the tragedy of Sept 11, 2001. Let us take a moment of silence to remember those who died and their families, and to pray for peace.
day’s Gospel tells us something of the commitment and work that it takes to follow Christ. The Scripture says we’re kind of like buildings: we have a foundation, and brick by brick by brick we are built up. We hope one day to be skyscrapers, to touch the clouds, to reach up to heaven, to become saints. It’s hard work, though, the building up of a skyscraper. Tomorrow is Labor Day, a day we celebrate labor and how we are wired for it. We are not meant to live our lives in armchairs. We are meant to labor–for our families, for our church, for the kingdom. We are wired to lay bricks.
Today our readings tell us to be humble, that the way to live a good life, a Christian life, is to be humble, to get over ourselves already. St. John Vianney said, “What sweetness there is in forgetting about ourselves in order to seek God!” Which is to say, as the saying goes, that humility is not about thinking less about ourselves, but thinking about ourselves less. To live a good Christian life, we have to get over ourselves.