Take First Timothy 6, 6.2c-12 for a start, Paul at his best getting down to brass tacks about day-to-day issues.
On this day, 9/19/25, Friday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time, we have advice from him understandable by all and rich with sermonic possibilities.
“Beloved,” he says, “Teach and urge these things.”
He who “teaches something different” from what our Lord Jesus Christ taught “is conceited, understands nothing, and has a morbid disposition for arguments and verbal disputes.”
Paul minces no words.
He calls them conceited know-it-alls with a yen for arguing, says from them come “envy, rivalry, insults, evil suspicions,” who cause “friction among people” whose minds have been “corrupted.”
Heretics there were even then, “deprived of the truth, supposing religion to be a means of gain,” a this-world kind of thing.
He allows that with “contentment,” religion provides “a great gain,” in the realizing that we “brought nothing into the world . . . just as we shall not be able to take anything out of it.”
You can’t take it with you, as the movie title had it ages ago.
With true religion, he says, “If we have food and clothing, we shall be content with that.”
On the other hand, “Those who want to be rich . . . are falling into temptation.”
The greedy find themselves dealing with “harmful desires, which plunge them into ruin and destruction.”
“For the love of money,” he says, in what became a go-ahead line, “is the root of all evils,” leading some to stray from the faith and suffer “many pains.”
The perils of greed.
“But you, man of God,” he tells Timothy, are to “avoid all this,” instead pursuing “righteousness, devotion, faith, love, patience, and gentleness.
“Lay hold of eternal life, to which you were called when you made your commitment in the presence of many witnesses.”
And the day’s gospel, Luke 8:1-3, I must say, added little to all this . . .
Jesus journeyed from one town and village to another,
preaching and proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God.
Accompanying him were the Twelve
and some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities,
Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out,
Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza,
Susanna, and many others
who provided for them out of their resources.
Contrast that with the Old Mass gospel:
GOSPEL Matt. 24:3-13
At that time, as Jesus was sitting on mount Olivet, the disciples came to him privately, saying: “Tell us when shall these things be? And what shall be the sign of thy coming and of the consummation of the world?” And Jesus answering, said to them: “Take heed that no man seduce you. For many will come in my name saying, I am Christ. And they will seduce many. And you shall hear of wars and rumours of wars. See that ye be not troubled. For these things must come to pass: but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: And there shall be pestilences and famines and earthquakes in places. Now all these are the beginnings of sorrows. Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted and shall put you to death: and you shall be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. And then shall many be scandalized and shall betray one another and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall rise and shall seduce many. And because iniquity hath abounded, the charity of many shall grow cold. But he that shall persevere to the end, he shall be saved.”
So be it in the ongoing parade of differences between our two Masses . . .
Dominus Vobiscum: Notes from a massgoer's underground 