This morning, at Mass, the readings perked up my ears, and I want to share them. (I had already gone in wondering whether the priest would discuss Pope Francis’ interview published in the most recent issue of America magazine, which he did.) On the way home, I was thinking about these readings in light of the recent fast-food workers’ strikes for a living wage and in light of yesterday’s House of Representatives vote to cut food stamp funding.

Here was the first reading, from the eighth chapter of Amos:

4. Listen to this, you who crush the needy and reduce the oppressed to nothing,

5 you who say, ‘When will New Moon be over so that we can sell our corn, and Sabbath, so that we can market our wheat? Then, we can make the bushel-measure smaller and the shekel-weight bigger, by fraudulently tampering with the scales.

6. We can buy up the weak for silver and the poor for a pair of sandals, and even get a price for the sweepings of the wheat.’

7.  Yahweh has sworn by the pride of Jacob, ‘Never will I forget anything they have done.’

The Psalm was similarly themed, and the Gospel reading came from from the sixteenth chapter of Luke; here is a portion of it:

10. Anyone who is trustworthy in little things is trustworthy in great; anyone who is dishonest in little things is dishonest in great.

11. If then you are not trustworthy with money, that tainted thing, who will trust you with genuine riches?

12. And if you are not trustworthy with what is not yours, who will give you what is your very own?

13. ‘No servant can be the slave of two masters: he will either hate the first and love the second, or be attached to the first and despise the second. You cannot be the slave both of God and of money.’

. . . things to think about before we go back business as usual on Monday.