Homily of Pope Leo XIV at the Mass he celebrated this Sunday in the parish of Santa Ana in the Vatican

Leo XIV in his homily in the parish of Santa Ana in the Vatican, warned that we cannot serve God, and invited the faithful to opt for a lifestyle focused on trust, fraternity and the common good. Read here the complete homily.

By the way, the gospel that has just been proclaimed causes us to carefully examine our link with the Lord and, therefore, among us. Jesus raises a very clear alternative between God and wealth, asking us to take a clear and coherent position. “No servant can serve two gentlemen,” so “you cannot serve God and money” (cf. Lc 16,13).

It is not a contingent choice, like so many others, or a revisable option over time, according to situations. It is necessary to decide a true lifestyle. It is about choosing where to place our heart, to clarify who we sincerely love, who we serve with dedication and what is really our good.

That is why Jesus contrasts precisely wealth to God: the Lord speaks like this because he knows that we are creatures in need, that our life is full of shortcomings. Since we are born, poor, naked, we all need care and affection, a house, food, dress.

The thirst for wealth runs the risk of occupying the place of God in our hearts, when we believe that it is the one who saves our life, as the dishonest administrator of the parabola thinks (cf. Lc 16,3-7). Temptation is this: to think that without God we could also live well, while without wealth we would be sad and overwhelmed by a thousand needs.

Given the proof of need we feel threatened, but instead of asking for help with confidence and sharing fraternity, we tend to calculate, accumulate, become suspicious and distrustful of others.

These thoughts transform others into a competitor, in a rival, or in someone to obtain. As the prophet Amós warns, who want to make wealth an instrument of domain, they do not see the time to “buy for money from the homeless” (AM 8,6), exploiting their poverty.

On the contrary, God allocates the goods of creation to all. Our destitution of creatures then attests to a promise and a link of which the Lord takes over in the first person. The psalmist describes this provident style: God “leans to look over the heavens and earth”; He “raises the weak dust, from manure rises to the poor” (Ps 113,6-7).

Thus acts the good father, always and towards all: not only to whom he is poor of material goods, but also towards that spiritual and moral misery that afflicts the powerful as the weak, the homeless people as the rich.

The word of the Lord, in effect, does not oppose men in rival classes, but urges everyone to an inner revolution, a conversion that begins in the heart. Then our hands will open: to give, not to snatch.

Then our minds will open: to project a better society, not to look for business at the best price. As San Pablo writes: “First of all I recommend that pleas, sentences, intercessions and thanksgiving for all men, the kings and for all those who have authority be made” (1 Tim 2,1).

Today, in particular, the Church prays so that the rulers of the nations are free from the temptation to use wealth against man, transforming it into weapons that destroy the peoples and monopolies that humiliate workers.

Who serves God is free from wealth, but who serves the wealth is a slave to her! Who seeks justice transforms wealth into a common good; who seeks domain transforms the common good into the dam of its avidity.

Sacred Scriptures shed light on this attachment to material goods, which confuses our heart and distorts our future.

Dear, I thank you because, in various ways, they collaborate to keep the community of this parish alive and also exercise a generous apostolate. I encourage them to persevere with hope in a time seriously threatened by war.

Whole peoples are today crushed by violence and even more for a shameless disinterest that abandons them to a destiny of misery. Given these dramas, we do not want to be liabilities, but to announce with the word and with the works that Jesus is the Savior of the world, the one who frees us from all evil.

That his spirit converts our hearts so that, fed by the Eucharist, the supreme treasure of the Church, we can become witnesses of charity and peace.