Epistle.
Romans viii. 12-17.
Brethren:
We are debtors not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you shall die. But if by the spirit you mortify the deeds of the flesh, you shall live. For whosoever are led by the spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For you have not received the spirit of bondage again in fear: but you have received the spirit of adoption of sons, whereby we cry, Abba (Father). For the Spirit himself giveth testimony to our spirit, that we are the sons of God. And if sons, heirs also; heirs indeed of God, and joint heirs with Christ.
Gospel.
St. Luke xvi. 1-9.
At that time:
Jesus spoke to his disciples this parable: There was a certain rich man who had a steward: and the same was accused unto him, that he had wasted his goods. And he called him, and said to him: What is this I hear of thee? Give an account of thy stewardship: for now thou canst not be steward. And the steward said within himself: What shall I do, because my lord taketh away from me the stewardship? To dig I am not able, to beg I am ashamed. I know what I will do, that when I shall be put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses. Therefore calling together every one of his lord's debtors, he said to the first: How much dost thou owe my lord? But he said: A hundred barrels of oil. And he said to him: Take thy bill and sit down quickly, and write fifty. Then he said to another: And how much dost thou owe? Who said: A hundred quarters of wheat. He said to him: Take thy bill and write eighty. And the lord commended the unjust steward, forasmuch as he had done wisely: for the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light. And I say to you: Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of iniquity, that when you shall fail they may receive you into everlasting dwellings.

Sermon CII.
Spirit And Flesh.

For if you live according to the flesh you shall die.
But if by the spirit you mortify the deeds of the flesh
you shall live.
—Romans viii. 13.

What does the Apostle mean by this? This only, that the flesh with its concupiscence and lusts must never get such power over our will that it will carry us along with it and make us obey its longings and desires when we know these are forbidden by Almighty God. I say "this only" because to have the flesh is no sin; neither is it a sin to feel the disorderly movements of the flesh that lead to sin; but it is a sin to consent to these and to follow them. For this reason we are told that if we mortify the deeds of the flesh, to which these movements of the flesh lead us, we shall live. But what does the word "mortify" mean? It means to destroy that which makes the life of a thing. Notice here the Apostle does not tell us to mortify the flesh itself but the deeds of the flesh. To do this we need not then attempt to kilt the flesh, but we must destroy all that gives life to its deeds.

What are the deeds of the flesh? They are the seven capital sins—pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, sloth. Can we kill them? In the most important sense we can. We can get them so under our control that, after awhile, they will move us but slightly and cannot influence us to any great degree. We shall feel from time to time that they are still present in us, but that cannot disturb us much. We shall have taken their strength away. We shall have made them so weak that we can check them easily.

Ought not each one of us strive to get ourselves into that blessed state? But how can we do it? Make up your mind to do it. Form a good resolution, one that will not change but that will be firm for life. Then live according to that resolution. When pride is aroused, refuse to follow its promptings; when covetousness moves the heart, stop the eager desire for gain; when lust would lead you away, contend against the thought until it is driven out; when anger disturbs, seal the lips with the sign of the holy cross; when gluttony makes you long for feasting and drinking, refuse to go where these things are going on; when envy racks the soul, pray for the one who is the object of envy; when sloth tempts you to self-indulgence and inactivity, stir up the fear of God and holy shame within the soul, for sloth is a destroyer indeed of all that is truly manly and heroic in us.

But all this is about as hard to do as anything a man can do, some may say. Yes, it is hard to do, but the success is sure. Shall a man do less for God than for himself? See the time and labor spent to secure that which is necessary for the body and success in the life of only a few years in this world. Shall a man not do as much for the good of his soul and for eternal life in the next world?

Is it really so hard as it seems? By no means. We make it harder than it really is by putting it all together and by thinking we are to do it all at once. This is not true. It must be done by degrees, slowly, patiently, perseveringly, but surely.

The devil makes us think it harder by telling us, when we feel the sharpness of the first struggle, "You can't bear it this way, for life." You can if God wills it and gives you the grace. And most people, almost all Christian souls, do not have it "this way, for life." Those who keep up the struggle get stronger day by day. In them the flesh and the movements of sin grow less day by day. The devil, however, wishes us to believe the lie he tells, to make us give up the struggle. Do not listen to the lie and it cannot hurt you. Remember always, it is a lie, and the mind will not take hold of it.

We can make it all the easier by trusting God, who will always help us in the struggle. Pray more. Go to confession often. The confessor will then help us and remove much of the burden by good advice. Go to Communion often, and God himself will make it easier for us than we imagine by giving his own strength to the soul at that time. Only begin earnestly to control the flesh, continue perseveringly to use confession and Communion. This, with daily morning and evening prayer, will take away very many difficulties. Soon we shall find we have truly mortified the deeds of the flesh, and then indeed we shall live, for the flesh will then be dead or dying fast and too weak to hurt the soul. Keep, then, in the mind the text from the Epistle of to-day: "For if you live according to the flesh you shall die. But if by the spirit you mortify the deeds of the flesh you shall live."

Sermon CIII.
The Business Of The Soul.

The Lord commended the unjust steward,
forasmuch as he had done wisely.
—Words Taken From To-day's Gospel.

One of the things which strikes us most forcibly in reading the instructions of our Blessed Lord as we have them in the holy Gospels is the matter-of-fact, common-sense, business-like manner in which he sets before us the way we must act in order to save our souls. We find no sentimentalism, no rhetoric, no fine-sounding flights of eloquence which delight the imagination and please the fancy indeed, but which are too fleeting and flimsy to serve as a basis of every-day action. No; with our Lord this matter of the salvation of our souls is a matter of infinite business, a question of eternal profit and loss. Let me recall a few examples: "The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking good pearls, who, when he had found one of great price, went his way and sold all he had and bought it." Here the way in which we are to act in order to get the kingdom of heaven is compared to the way in which the man of business acts who finds a good article—something worth his money. What does he do? Why, if it is really worth it—and the kingdom of heaven, the salvation of our souls is worth it—he sells all that he has and buys it. And yet again our Lord places before us the salvation of our souls as based upon a calculation of what is the more profitable course to take in those words the realization of which has called forth the highest heroism of the greatest of the saints: "If thy eye offend thee pluck it out and cast it from thee." Why? Because "it is better for thee with one eye to enter the kingdom of God than, having two eyes, to be cast into the hell of fire." Here again it is a calculation of loss and gain—the loss of an eye in this world as against that of the whole body in the next. Shall I, on the principle that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, keep my two eyes; or shall I, for the sake of saving the whole body, pluck out the eye, cut off the foot or hand? But of all the places where this way of looking at things and of acting is inculcated and enforced, the most striking is in the parable read in to-day's Gospel. Here our Lord, in order to lead us to take a practical, hard-headed way of acting with reference to the salvation of our souls, brings before us the conduct of the unjust steward, and, strange to say, actually praises it. And how did this unjust steward act? The unjust steward was a dishonest man. He had been placed in a position of trust, but had wasted his master's goods—perhaps speculated with his money, made false entries in his books, or something else of that kind. Well, the truth came out at last, as it generally does sooner or later, and he was at his wits end what to do. No thought of repentance enters into his head; he has got on a wrong road, and he found it, as we all find it, very hard to get out of it. And so, knowing the men with whom he has to deal, he sends for some of his master's debtors, and, in order to make them his friends and to establish a claim on them for help and assistance when he gets into trouble, he alters their bills and makes them less. "And the Lord commended the unjust steward because he had done wisely." Our Lord does not commend, of course, the dishonesty of his conduct; this we all understand. But he commends his clearness of sight as to what was for his worldly interest, and his promptitude in taking wise and suitable means to further that interest. What our Lord wants to teach us is that we must act for our highest interest in the same clear-sighted, determined, wise, and prudent way in which this specimen of a worldly man acted for the sordid and selfish and foolish ends of men of this world. Well, my brethren, take these thoughts home with you, and ask yourselves, each and every one of you, how you are acting. Have you an intelligent view of the end you have to attain, of its value and importance, and of the means by which it is to be attained, and are you acting earnestly in order to attain that end?

Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of iniquity;
that when you shall fail
they may receive you into everlasting dwellings.
—Gospel of the Day.

My dear brethren, there will come to each one of us a day when all those earthly goods we now enjoy shall fail us, when we shall have to turn our backs on the world and all that it has to give us, and prepare ourselves to stand before him to whom all things that we had and enjoyed belong, and give an account to him of the uses which we have made of them. We have, like the steward in to-day's Gospel, a Lord and Master; and to him we must sooner or later give an account of our stewardship.

And it is only too likely, we may say it is indeed certain, that when that dread moment comes at which this world must be left behind, the charge will also be made against us, as against the steward in this parable, that we have wasted our Master's goods. Our consciences will rise up and condemn us, and anticipate the accusation which shall be brought against us when we shall actually come face to face with God. Then all the security we have had in the thought that we are not murderers, robbers, or adulterers shall vanish; we shall not be able to console ourselves with the idea that we have done no great harm to any one. We shall see how selfish and how sensual our lives have been; that we have wasted for the pleasure of a passing moment the greater part of those gifts which God gave us for his service. Wasted our time, our strength, our knowledge, and our abilities in getting for ourselves the means of gratification or amusement, or in raising ourselves for our own sake to a position of honor or of wealth. We shall see what we might have been, what God meant that we should be, and compare it with what we are.

Fain would we then be able to say with St. Paul, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course." Our faith indeed we shall, it is to be hoped, have kept; but we shall feel that our fight has been but a poor and cowardly one, and that we, instead of finishing the course which our Lord laid out for us, have gone over only a very small part of it, and that its goal is far, far away.

What, then, shall be our hope? For hope we must have if we would not offend God even more then than through life. He commands us to hope; but in what shall our hope be placed?

Where or in what but his mercy? He will take us, grievously deficient as we are, and make the little, miserable offerings which we have to present to him, the remnant of what he gave us, into some kind of a crown of eternal life, if only we will turn to him with our whole hearts; if we will at least, at that last moment, really believe in him, hope in him, and love him. He that perseveres to the end, he that will not die in mortal sin, shall be saved.

But what shall obtain for us at that last moment the faith, hope, and charity which we need? Who will help us to persevere when the enemies of our salvation are making the most of their last chance to snatch it from us? Will those with whom we have enjoyed life then stand by to help us? It is to be feared that they and all that they have done for us will not avail us much then. No, the friends who will then be most valuable to us will be those, if indeed we have such, whom we have not sought for our own sake, but whom we loved for God's sake. And it is not the riches which we amassed that will then be precious to us, but such as we have given away to those who needed it more than we.

These are the friends which our Lord, in to-day's Gospel, tells us to make, that they may help us at the hour when our eternal destiny hangs trembling in the balance. These are the friends which may be made by that mammon of iniquity, those worldly riches which are too often the occasion of sin, and whose prayers and blessings may indeed be the means of our being received, in spite of our unprofitableness, into everlasting habitations. Happy is the man who, when he comes to die, knows that God's poor have prayed for him, and have blessed his name.