Friday of the Thirty-first Week in Ordinary Time
I was tempted to avoid today’s gospel passage from Luke, The Parable of the Dishonest Steward, and reflect instead on the first reading, but it called out to me as too important to ignore. Both confusing and challenging, it seems to demand that we take account of how we are using or “spending” our time, talent, and treasure. Maybe even questioning what it is that we truly treasure.
If we read ahead several verses, we also encounter the familiar, “No servant can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” (Luke 16:13) Jesus’ words cut right to the core. How am I using that which is entrusted to me? Who or what am I serving? I, sometimes, recognize that I’m serving my own ego, other times working to please others for my own sense of security. But that is not where true freedom is found.
Scripture scholars say that mammon is translated in this context as “that in which one trusts.” So, I think the question becomes, where do I place my trust? If not with God, then with what or whom? If not with God, then, as Luke tells us, is not my love for God divided?
My prayer today is that as individuals and a community we act more prudently with what has been given to us, trusting that God will provide all that is needed. For as the Prayer of St. Francis reminds us, “It is in giving that we receive...and it is in dying that we’re born to eternal life.” As disciples of Jesus, that is what radical love calls us to.
~Eileen Miller