This dishonest steward had been embezzling from his master’s business. He goes to the master’s debtors, who had been delinquent in paying their rent the master, because the master, after all, was an absentee landlord. The steward then falsifies entries in the books so that the debtors would be grateful to him, but also complicit in his fraud. Perhaps he would blackmail them later. And when the master discovers all this underhanded business, he’s actually impressed and praises the criminal mastermind for his shrewdness.
The lesson? The disciples of Jesus are to employ similar cleverness in working for God. Not committing crimes of course in furthering the kingdom, but certainly exercising ingenuity, creativity, and cunning in fulfilling our Gospel mandate.
If people of faith were as motivated and cunning as these strange figures in the parable, how different the world would be.
So we need to be more clever in organizing charitable activity than head coaches in organizing victory for their franchises. We need to be more diligent in disciplining our minds and hearts than professional athletes in training their bodies. We need to be more clever than Wall Street bankers, in storing up treasure, not on earth, but in heaven.
Over and over again people will expend twenty times the amount of time and money and effort on pleasure, hobbies, gardening, sports, and leisure, than they do on their church. And our parish suffers for it, the church suffers for it.
How have we squandered the time we have been given? ? How many wasted hours in front of a television? Or a computer screen? In pursuing mindless entertainment or social media status? How many wasted opportunities for visiting the sick, feeding the hungry, visiting the lonely? How many God-given gifts, have gone unused because we didn’t want to leave our comfort zone?
Isn’t God saying to us, what the rich man said to the steward in the Gospel, “What is this I hear about you? Squandering the gifts I have given you?”
What would my life look like, what would my soul look like, if I planned and plotted with my fellow parishioners, like the steward and the debtors in the gospel today, planned and plotted in doing the works of God?
Let us take serious accounting, and by God’s grace, seek a transformation, a reorientation of values and practices, that our whole lives may be at His service for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
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That all Christians may endeavor to put their time, talent, treasure, creativity and energy into serving the mission of the Church. Let us pray to the Lord.
That our young people may be blessed to be raised in faith filled homes, that they may be protected from the evils of our culture, and be granted a firm knowledge of their vocation to holiness. Let us pray to the Lord.
That Christ the Good Shepherd will draw close to all who suffer, the sick, the needy, victims of injustice, and the dying.
We pray in a special way during this month of November for all the faithful departed, all deceased members of St. Ignatius of Antioch Parish, our deceased family members and friends, deceased clergy and religious, those who fought and died for our freedom and for X. for whom this mass is offered.
O God, you know that our life in this present age is subject to suffering and need, hear the prayers of those who cry to you and receive the prayers of those who believe in you. Through Christ our Lord.
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