Twenty-Fifth Sunday of Ordinary Time

Father Stephen Bankemper

Guest

For the last few weeks, we have been making our way through a section of Luke that contains many, as some describe them, “hard sayings” of Jesus. They have been hard, not to understand, but to do — take the lowest place, give to those who cannot repay, let no one and no thing be more important to us than Jesus. The hard saying we encounter this weekend is a little of both — it can be hard at first to understand, and then also hard to do.

“And the master commended that dishonest steward for acting prudently.” What does this mean? Can a person act dishonestly and prudently at the same time? What is Jesus trying to teach with this parable?

Dr. Brant Pitre, drawing on St. Augustine, explains the parable by highlighting two aspects of the steward’s actions: his foresight (securing a place for himself when his time as steward ends) and his resourcefulness.

The key to understanding Jesus is this sentence: “For the children of this world are more prudent in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.” Jesus is not saying that the children of light — his disciples — should be dishonest as the children of this world, but that we should be as intelligent and resourceful in our preparations for eternity as they are in living their lives now.

As Dr. Pitre puts it, “What Jesus is saying is that if people in this world go to extreme measures to think about providing for themselves for the future, even so much as to steal, then how much more should Christians — disciples of Jesus — go to extreme measures to prepare for and to ensure for our … eternal life.” (Pitre podcast)

That one day we will leave this Earth and live somewhere else for eternity is surprisingly hard for us to remember; after all, we experience people dying all the time. We focus so much on our earthly lives that we can forget or ignore reality. Even when they remember, however, many people in our modern society make an even worse mistake — they assume that everyone spends eternity with God, that there is no need to prepare for it in this life. Jesus’ parable is a reminder of these two important truths: that there is life after our time on Earth, and that we need to prepare for it.

How should we prepare? Pitre connects the steward’s actions in the parable with a line from a commentary by St. Ephrem: “Buy for yourselves, O sons of Adam, those things which do not pass away, by means of those transitory things which are not yours!”

Just as the steward uses money which is not his (change your promissory note from 100 measures of olive oil to 50) to buy a secure future for himself, so should we use the earthly money that does not belong to us to secure our heavenly future.

What money do we have that does not belong to us? One of the principles of Catholic social teaching is called the universal destination of goods. After we have supplied our legitimate needs with our money, the Church understands that we have a moral obligation to use our excess, at least in part, to care for others in need. “And the multitudes asked him [John the Baptist], ‘What then shall we do?’ And he answered them, ‘He who has two coats, let him share with him who has none; and he who has food, let him do likewise.’”

The word Scripture uses for this practice is almsgiving. In the Bible, alms refer to money — any material goods, really — given to the poor. Almsgiving is different from tithing. Tithing is 10 percent — the first and best — of one’s goods returned to God (it belonged to God by virtue of the fact that all we have comes from God) by prescription of the law. Almsgiving is a practice certainly encouraged in Scripture — some say implicitly mandated — but was money given to other human beings more out of the moral obligation of charity, mercy, or compassion.

We cannot literally buy ourselves into heaven — it is unlikely that St. Ephrem meant that — but almsgiving is a practice that can free us from a spiritually unhealthy attachment to our material goods (“Anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.” Luke 14:33), increase the virtue of charity in us, and help us to lay up for ourselves “treasure in heaven,” (Matt 6:20)

St. Augustine preached that the steward was “insuring himself for a life that was going to end.” (Sermon 359a, cited by Pitre) Then he asks the question, “Would you not insure yourself for eternal life?” Will we?

Father Stephen Bankemper is pastor, St. Catherine of Siena Parish, Ft. Thomas, Ky.