The
sayings of Jesus which Luke has collected into today’s gospel reading are
comments on what we heard in yesterday’s reading. That was about the unjust
steward who realized that he was about to lose his job because of mismanaging
his employer’s property. To assure himself of friends who would be indebted to
him, and might offer him future employment after he was let go, he calls in the
people who owe money to his master’s estate and settles their debts for fifty
cents on the dollar. To our surprise Jesus commends the steward “for acting
prudently.” Jesus does not praise the
man’s dishonesty. He praises his prudence. Realizing that the knife is at his
throat, the man acts, desperately, to ensure his future.
Today’s
gospel continues Jesus’ teaching about money, for which he uses the ancient Hebrew
word mammon. This culminates in the sayings,
“No servant can serve to masters. … You cannot serve God and mammon.” Jesus is not saying that money and possessions are
bad. Nothing that God has made is bad; indeed everything that comes from God is
good. It participates in some measure in the absolute goodness of God the
Creator. What is at stake is how we use
money. Used to support people and causes we love, money is good.
Given the central place in our lives by trying to amass more and more and more,
money makes us unhappy and frustrated (as people who give money the central
place in their lives soon discover) – because we find we can never get enough.
Jesus’
personal religion taught the law of tithing: giving the Lord out of gratitude,
the first claim on our money and
possessions. For most Catholics that seems so out of reach to be almost
preposterous. There is one place in our country, however, where tithing is a
reality: the diocese of Wichita,
Kansas. There, after decades of
teaching, tithing is all but universal. One consequence is that whereas all
other dioceses are struggling to maintain Catholic schools in the face of today’s
rising costs, all the Catholic schools in
the Wichita
diocese are tuition free! Another consequence: the Wichita
diocese has almost as many seminarians as does our own
archdiocese of St. Louis – which has five times
the Catholic population of Wichita.
Think about that, friends. Above all, pray about it.
Think about that, friends. Above all, pray about it.
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