Today’s gospel reading in traditional Catholic churches is about money and attitudes to money.

Words of Jesus: “No man can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one, and love the other: or he will be devoted to the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.  

“Worry not about your life, what you will eat, or for your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food: and the body more than clothing?

“Look at the birds, they neither sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns: yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you of more value than they? Can any of you, by taking thought, add a single moment to his life-span?

“And why worry about clothing? Consider the lilies in the field, how they grow: they do not labour, nor spin. Yet not even Solomon, in all his glorious robes, was clothed like one of them. If God so clothes the grass in the field, which is here today and thrown in the furnace tomorrow: will he not much more care for you – you who have so little faith?

“Worry not then, saying, ‘What are we to eat: what are we to drink: what will we have to wear?’  These are the things the heathens seek. Your Father knows that you need them all.  

“Seek first, therefore, the Kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things will be given you as well.”  (Matthew’s Gospel, chapter 6)

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Arriving at a crossroads (unless you plan to sit there the rest of your life) you must go one way or the other. You cannot go both ways.

That applies also in the spiritual life — a fact that we spend much of our time pretending isn’t true.

We might convince ourselves that we’re basically good, despite doing a bit of money-worship on the side. We may convince others around us.

But God, we will not convince — and it is he who judges us. He judges justly.

If we don’t put ourselves utterly at God’s disposal, we are, in fact, putting ourselves into the hands of the devil — who hates us and will destroy us painfully and eternally.

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So God tells us, “Make up your mind.”