The Month of the Immaculate Heart of Mary concludes beautifully this year with the intense themes of the Sacred Liturgy for the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost. The Collect of the Mass confesses before Almighty God the weakness of man and his need for God’s grace: “…because the frailty of man without You cannot but fall, keep us ever by Your help from all harmful things, and lead us to all things profitable to our salvation.” The drama of our human freedom is here indicated, as the Epistle and the Gospel speak to us of the two kingdoms – of God and of Satan – between which we must choose on our way to salvation.
In the Epistle, St. Paul speaks to us frankly about the spiritual warfare into which we must enter in order to be saved. “The flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, for these are contrary to one another,” he tells us. And Jesus, in our Gospel, makes this warfare even more explicit, teaching us that we cannot serve both God and Mammon, which is the pleasure and happiness and success of this world.