reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke (16,1-13):
At that time, Jesus said to his disciples: “A rich man had a steward, whom they accused before him of wasting his goods. So he called him and said:
“What is this I am hearing from you? Give me an account of your administration, because from now on you will not be able to continue administering. The administrator began to say to himself:
“What am I going to do, since my lord takes away my administration? I have no strength to dig; begging makes me ashamed. I already know what I am going to do so that, when they kick me out of the administration, I will find someone who will receive me in his house”. He called his master’s debtors one by one and said to the first: “How much do you owe my master?” He replied: “One hundred barrels of oil.” He told her, “Take your receipt; hurry, sit down and write fifty”. Then he said to another:
“And you, how much do you owe?” He replied, “One hundred bushels of wheat.” He tells her, “Take your receipt and write eighty.” And the master praised the unjust steward, because he had acted cunningly. Indeed, the children of this world are more cunning with their own people than the children of light. And I say to you: win friends with the money of iniquity, so that, when you lack it, they will receive you in the eternal dwellings. He who is faithful in little is also faithful in much; he who is unjust in little is also unjust in much. For if you have not been faithful in unjust wealth, who will trust you with true wealth? If you were not faithful in what belongs to others, what is yours, who will give it to you? No servant can serve two masters, because he will either hate one and love the other, or else he will devote himself to the first and ignore the second. You cannot serve God and money.” Lord’s word.
The commentary on the parable helps its understanding; who has not known how to manage perishable goods, will not be worthy of receiving permanent ones; money cannot occupy in us the place that we should reserve for God. The cunning of the bad administrator was not in reserving other people’s goods for himself; he was unfaithful to the end, but farsighted: he managed to have friends in time of misfortune.
Indeed, he was not very faithful, but he was not stupid either, that administrator. He made friends with unfair money; Because of his cunning in preparing for a future, with no assets to dispose of but friends to turn to, the unfaithful steward was held up by Jesus as an example to his disciples. Surely Jesus did not want his disciples to copy his repeated dishonesty and lack of scruples from the manager, but rather the imagination he used to seek a way out of his desperate situation and the speed with which he brought it into effect. . Although dishonest, he was, at least, clever.
Today, like yesterday, the disciples of Jesus continue to be less cunning than the people of the world; We continue to be the children of light, less imaginative, less daring, more timid, more pusillanimous, than the children of darkness. We should be surprised that Jesus urges us, like his first disciples one day, to make use of all that is within our reach to ensure a smooth future. It should surprise us that he urges us, in the face of foreseeable misfortune given our unfaithful way of living and administering his gifts, not to waste too much time in useless lamentations and to take advantage of any opportunity to prepare a way out of our evils: Jesus recommends us today that we look for a quick solution to our problems with God. May we not live so saddened by what we did yesterday that we do not get to work to avoid misfortune tomorrow.
As long as we have something that we can dispose of, as long as we have goods to manage, as long as we live – life, let us not forget, is God’s good that we manage -, nothing is totally lost, there is still some hope: the God of Jesus supports Less omission than infidelity, he prefers cunning to ineffectiveness, he values imagination more than laziness and defeatism. Like the master of the parable, knowing that we cannot be good administrators, God wants us, at least!, full of imagination and resources.
If we have not managed to be completely faithful to him, let us be at least more alive… in truth, it would be better if we took seriously what Jesus wants to say to his disciples: and it is that with his praise of the cunning of the unfaithful administrator he has wanted to free us from those guilt complexes that prevent us from putting what we have at the disposal of others. No longer being good should not lead us to refuse to make available to others the goods that we have from God; because we are bad stewards of God’s gifts we should not deny them to our neighbors. Rather, and here is the paradox, precisely because we are unjust in administration, God will not take our injustice into account when he serves the good of others.
The cunning of the administrator who deserves congratulations from God, after a life of doubtful fidelity, with poorly managed assets today, we can earn eternal life and God. Not bad at all, right? If God is not going to put many objections to us, even if we waste his goods, as long as we distribute them to whoever owes him something, he will not depend on our justice but on our generosity our salvation. Who can defraud himself of such a God, if he allows us to defraud Him as long as we do good to others? Good Sunday.
Enjoy the presence of God in the Mass and in the family!
#Sunday #25th #Ordinary #Time #cycle