The difference between God and Mammon – you expend your money and you have less; you expend your love but you never have less. One cannot call oneself authentically human unless there is love. It is love that transforms us from the material to the divine.
Aspiration is Inspiration! If all you aspire to is to “hit the lamppost” you may fall short – but if you aim at the moon you may also fall short – but how much higher will you have you travelled! Aim high and trust in Christ!
The beauty in our life is measured not by the image that the mirror reflects back to us but rather the love that we have for the one that loved us first.
For this week I can do no better than refer to St basils sermon to the rich: “But whom do I treat unjustly,” you say, “by keeping what is my own?”
Tell me, what is your own? What did you bring into this life? From where did you receive it? It is as if someone were to take the first seat in the theater, then bar everyone else from attending, so that one person alone enjoys what is offered for the benefit of all-this is what the rich do. They first take possession of the common property, and then they keep it as their own because they were the first to take it. But if every man took only what sufficed for his own need, and left the rest to the needy, no one would be rich, no one would be poor, no one would be in need. …
Is God unjust, dividing unequally the goods of this life? Why are you rich, while the other is poor? Isn’t it, if for no other reason, so that you can gain a reward for your kindness and faithful stewardship, and for him to be honored with the great virtue of patience? But you, having gathered everything inside the empty bosom of avarice, do you think that you wrong no one, while you rob so many people? …
He who strips a man of his clothes is to be called a thief. Is not he who, when he is able, fails to clothe the naked, worthy of no other title? The bread which you do not use is the bread of the hungry; the garment hanging in your wardrobe is the garment of him who is naked; the shoes that you do not wear are the shoes of the one who is barefoot; the money that you keep locked away is the money of the poor; the acts of charity that you do not perform are so many injustices that you commit.”