SundayGospelReflection.org

Gospel Reflection 20070923

In the eyes of the people of his time, Jesus was no winner.
Who wins and who loses always seems to require scorekeeping. To the people of his time, Jesus looked as if he was beaten down in death. The crucifixion was the final buzzer. But as Jesus had taught over and over, death was never the winner; death is not final. Redemption happens! Redemption is the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus and your chance to share in it, no matter what your life circumstances are. Redemption is offered by God so that you might fulfill your purpose in life as a Christian. Redemption means to identify what is scarred, broken and in need of healing in your life. It means to bring these experiences to Jesus and to allow him to mold you into a new creation, to teach you a new way to live.

----------

Act Shrewdly for the benefit of God
September 23, 2007


Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time



Gospel
Lk 16:1-13

Jesus said to his disciples,
“A rich man had a steward
who was reported to him for squandering his property.
He summoned him and said,
‘What is this I hear about you?
Prepare a full account of your stewardship,
because you can no longer be my steward.’
The steward said to himself, ‘What shall I do,
now that my master is taking the position of steward away from me?
I am not strong enough to dig and I am ashamed to beg.
I know what I shall do so that,
when I am removed from the stewardship,
they may welcome me into their homes.’
He called in his master’s debtors one by one.
To the first he said,
‘How much do you owe my master?’
He replied, ‘One hundred measures of olive oil.’
He said to him, ‘Here is your promissory note.
Sit down and quickly write one for fifty.’
Then to another the steward said, ‘And you, how much do you owe?’
He replied, ‘One hundred kors of wheat.’
The steward said to him, ‘Here is your promissory note;
write one for eighty.’
And the master commended that dishonest steward for acting shrewdly.
“For the children of this world
are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation
than are the children of light.
I tell you, make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth,
so that when it fails, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.
The person who is trustworthy in very small matters
is also trustworthy in great ones;
and the person who is dishonest in very small matters
is also dishonest in great ones.
If, therefore, you are not trustworthy with dishonest wealth,
who will trust you with true wealth?
If you are not trustworthy with what belongs to another,
who will give you what is yours?
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 both God and mammon.”




To say one thing and to do the opposite must be the hardest moral strife existing for the human heart to bear. To live with two faces is indeed the most restless state of any soul. This disappointing experience rips the ethical peace in the two-faced individual. The source of this moral defeat is that they commit to one thing, but postpone the well awaited actions and results of their freely chosen commitments. Having two faces is a suspicion factory for human relationships. Nevertheless Jesus in this parable leaves the back door open to the stubborn hearted. There is a real redeeming mechanism in place that our Lord finds, as a worthy solution, to the fate of this insincere steward. The steward, on learning that his time is limited, craftily conjures up long lasting friendships with everyone he was supposed to be doing business with from the start. The master praises the tactic used by the fired steward. The master even studies the prudence and creativity of this current enemy so as to teach the oncoming stewards how to deal with customers and vendors. This unlimited dedication in crunch times could be very useful and quite glorious, especially when it is performed by reliable stewards. What good could be truly achieved! There seems to appear a great blessedness when a steward implements, on one hand, fruit-provoking skills like kindness and prudence, deals intelligently and does more in less time. On the other hand, he communes with the wishes and desires of the master. How do I see this in my life? In my relationship with Christ and his Church, does there really appear a great blessedness in possessing a love for God and then consciously putting into practice many skills, talents and gifts solely for God’s glory and the establishment of his Kingdom? Does everything, ranging from conducting a family activity to receiving a phone call in the office or going to a party, have this unifying drive for God’s glory and the establishment of his Kingdom?


An angel appears at a faculty meeting and tells the dean that he has come to reward him for his years of devoted service. He was asked to choose one of three blessings: either infinite wealth, or infinite fame or infinite wisdom. Without hesitation, the dean asks for infinite wisdom. “You got it!” says the angel, and disappears. All heads turn toward the dean, who sits glowing in the aura of wisdom. Finally one of his colleagues whispers, “Say something.” The dean looks at them and says, “I should have taken the money.”
Wisdom, in the sense of being smart or shrewd as we see in today’s parable of the dishonest servant, is not an end in itself. One can be smart and use one’s smartness to do mean things. Many con artists and terrorists are smart people who use their smartness to create unhappiness in the world. Today’s parable challenges us to be smart in the pursuit of the kingdom of God just as godless people are smart in their pursuit of selfish goals and ambitions. Jesus uses the example of a smart manager in his master’s business to teach us the need to be smart in the Lord’s service. We are challenged to imitate the manager’s shrewdness, not his dishonesty. “The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly” (Luke 16:8).
Why did the master who had made up his mind to fire the manager now commend him? Probably the manager had been running his master’s business in a drab, routine and lifeless manner devoid of creativity and imagination. As a result the business was failing, so the master decides it is time to fire him: “Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer” (verse 2). The manager is facing a real danger of being dismissed from service. He knows the seriousness of the situation. He is not kidding himself. He knows exactly how helpless he is out there. He says to himself, “What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg” (verse 3). He knows he is in a very difficult and precarious situation. He scratches his head and comes up with this ingenious plan to safeguard his future. The master praises him because if the manager had been using such smart thinking in the daily running of the business he would have made a much more successful manager rather than a failure.
The parable challenges us all to be smart managers. Me a manager, you say? Yes, we are all called to be managers. God has entrusted the whole of His creation into our hands as His managers. Jesus Christ, in addition, entrusts the kingdom of God – the kingdom of love, justice and peace – into our hands as his managers. World peace and harmony, and the renewal of all things in Christ, are the business of us all, collectively and individually. Jesus calls it the kingdom of God. Our business as followers of Christ, non-ordained as well as ordained believers, is to help bring about the kingdom of God starting from our own selves. We have all been given the necessary resources to do this. We have been equipped with the truth of faith, we have been empowered by the Holy Spirit who dwells in our hearts, and we have been given time. Sooner or later we shall all be called upon to render an account of how we have invested and managed these resources.
Events in our world show that we live in difficult and precarious times, like the manager in the parable. The manager faced squarely the truth of his helplessness and vulnerability and did something about it. Why do we keep on telling ourselves the lie that we are safe and secure and that nothing can ever happen to us? We do not have to wait, like the dishonest servant, for a last minute display of smartness to fix our eternal concerns. The time to be smart is now. The smart manager used what he could not keep to get what he needed so badly, friendship with his business associates. We should likewise invest all our temporal and spiritual resources to gain the only thing that matters in the end: the kingdom of God.


Jesus attacks neither riches nor the rich. Instead, in calling his followers to prefer absolutely nothing to himself, he is teaching everyone, rich and poor, how to put in order their relationship with money.

There are no pockets in a shroud. This commonsense observation tells us something of what Jesus teaches, although he goes much further. If you live your life for money’s sake, you are a fool, because, in the end, money will abandon you. You cannot even guarantee that it will go to those to whom you bequeath it. Like fire and water, money can be a good servant, but is always an exacting task-master. Which it is to be, depends on you. In the end, you can blame neither economic structures nor your life’s circumstances for the way you personally deal with money. As with all created things, money, too, must be obtained and administered in the freedom of the truth. Honesty, prudence and generosity ought to mark the Christian’s dealings with money. Sometimes this seems impossible, given the prevailing pressures to cheat, steal and accumulate wealth. But unless we commit ourselves, on a personal, family and Church basis, to use money for the glory of God, we will fail to respond to the radical call of Jesus and thus fail to witness to His supremacy in the world. By using money for the glory of God, I do not mean give it all away, unless you are called to do so in the state of life you follow. I mean rather to dispense it with the wisdom of the Gospel, not with calculating greed. If you are married, you cannot give it away unless you have first fulfilled your family obligations, both present and future. If you are single and plan to get married, you must seek to find a balance between saving for the future and fulfilling your Christian obligation of almsgiving. If you are elderly, you need to ensure your security, yet be willing to be realistic about what that actually means for you and for others. Those of us in religious life, depending on our circumstances, should, percentage wise, be more generous in giving our actual possessions away. At local, national and international levels, creative ways must be found to strike a balance between the demands of social justice, on the one hand, and, on the other, measures which will stimulate economic growth. The aim of all this is not money, but the promotion of the human dignity of every human being. This is God’s desire and God’s glory for humanity in its use of mammon.
But all of us, without exception, must make it our task, not only to consult financial advisors, but to administer our earthly goods in accordance with the will and wisdom of the Lord: you cannot serve both God and money. If you keep your financial concerns out of the reach of your life of faith, you are not going to be able to administer your goods according to the counsel of the Holy Spirit.
Apart from its obvious meaning of being free from the idolatry of money, this teaching of Jesus also contains another, deeper truth. Every human being is by definition a servant. Recall the words of St. Paul: Jesus emptied Himself, and assumed the condition of a servant, that is, he became man. Service is constitutive of humanity. Any human person will serve someone or something. Service is not the antithesis of freedom, but the highest expression of it, since true service is born of true love. We need freely to give our freedom, for that is what it seeks to be truly liberated. Otherwise we become inhuman; indeed, the one who uses his freedom only for himself, or gives it to something less than human, loses his freedom, and his humanity, in doing so. The question is not whether we are servants or whether we are free, but how we live our freedom in service. Jesus teaches us that if we freely serve something which ought to be at our service, be it money or earthly power or any other thing sought for its own sake, then we will end up hating him: if money is your master, Jesus is your enemy. Money as master will abuse you until you die, then it will leave you deprived of itself and all that it promised, and also deprived of God. If you serve the Lord your God above and before all else, then money will become a tool at your service to gain riches in the sight of God, that is the precious treasures of charity and truth.
Undue attachment to money is surely akin to addiction. Just as living to drink becomes the alcoholic’s whole concern, so living to make money for money’s sake takes possession of a person. Everything in their lives can become subtly, and not so subtly, oriented to making themselves richer. The very thought of an extra (and positive) zero on their bank statement fills them with a scrooge-like delight. For them, there is nothing more satisfying than a quick buck. Irrespective of what it means to their poverty-stricken brothers and sisters, the important thing is that the value of their investments goes up! Personal relationships are cultivated or broken off on the basis of whether or not someone can be used to make more money. Old-fashioned comics would portray such people with dollar-signs in their eyes, and, if we could see into their dreams, they might make scrooge look like St. Francis of Assisi. How must their hearts appear in the eyes of God? What is the problem with such people? Is it their money or their bank accounts or any of their possessions? No, because all such things are of themselves without any moral relevance. Is it the fact that they are rich? No, because a poor person can also be obsessed with making money. The problem is their spiritual, moral and psychological disposition, which, like the sclerotic liver of the alcoholic, decays with every further act of gain, at any price. Indeed, of the two, the alcoholic may be the better off because, while he might well be totally unable to help himself, the one who has sold himself to money has probably invested more of his freedom into its service.
The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great. Jesus tells us that, from the perspective of the Gospel, money is a very small matter. If you are not trustworthy with dishonest wealth, he asks, who will trust you with true wealth? Dishonest wealth means here false wealth, that is money, as opposed to true wealth, that is the charity of God. If you trust money, your well-being and independence are illusory: in this sense, for the money addict, all money is really counterfeit. We all know we depend on one another, but money can lead you to think you depend on no-one, not even on God. Even giving to charity becomes a favor you do for God, not the grateful fulfillment of your duty as a child of God and a brother or sister to the poor. True wealth could be summed up in the words Jesus uses elsewhere: seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all other things will be given you as well. If you cannot be trusted to develop a healthy attitude to money, how can you be trusted to welcome with sincerity the Kingdom and the righteousness of God?
It should also be said that, if the abuse of money can cause the sin of idolatry to weave its way into the fabric of the soul, abuse of the spiritual gifts given by God will lead to even greater consequences. Indeed, the abuse of material gifts most likely presupposes the abuse of spiritual gifts. The spiritual gifts are given to be developed and used for God’s glory, for one’s salvation and for the growth of the Church and of humanity. If you waste your intelligence through laziness, people will say: what a waste! But are we so quick to lament when someone does not use the grace of their baptism or marriage?
The Lord gives us all these gifts, both material and spiritual, that we might live with grateful hearts, trusting in Him for all that we might yet need. But, let me ask an even more solemn question: what is any gift in comparison with the Giver? God’s gifts are not given so that then, in childish arrogance, we bid Him goodbye and live happily ever after! Every gift, even the most precious, is but a sign of the gift of Himself which He also offers us. We use those gifts in the world and in the Church to build up a civilization of love ready to welcome the coming of His Kingdom: but the gifts are not ends in themselves. We are not baptized for our own sake only, nor married for our own pleasure and convenience, nor given gifts of mind, memory and imagination just to build up another Tower of Babel. All we have and all we are must be focused, directed, propelled towards the Lord who comes. Mammon is for man, but man is for God, so mammon too must be used to serve God in the world, if it is to be used aright, and if we are to be judged as trustworthy in very small matters.
Brothers and sisters: it is urgent that we learn evermore deeply to pray, and to bring the entirety of our lives and activities to God. Do not say you have no time when you see how much time you waste in banalities. Keeping alive the flame of the memory of the living God in your lives is essential to avoid being consumed by idolatry, be it money or any other thing. You will not be able to trade a place in heaven for your stock-market shares.
Christ became poor in suffering and in death that we might become rich in resurrection. Let not money harden your heart to the unspeakable generosity of the Lord and thus, ironically, to rob you of the only wealth which can take you beyond the grave.

----------

St. Padre Pio da Pietrelcina


(1887-1968)



In one of the largest such ceremonies in history, Pope John Paul II canonized Padre Pio of Pietrelcina on June 16, 2002. It was the 45th canonization ceremony in Pope John Paul's pontificate. More than 300,000 people braved blistering heat as they filled St. Peter's Square and nearby streets. They heard the Holy Father praise the new saint for his prayer and charity. "This is the most concrete synthesis of Padre Pio's teaching," said the pope. He also stressed Padre Pio's witness to the power of suffering. If accepted with love, the Holy Father stressed, such suffering can lead to "a privileged path of sanctity."
Many people have turned to the Italian Capuchin Franciscan to intercede with God on their behalf; among them was the future Pope John Paul II. In 1962, when he was still an archbishop in Poland, he wrote to Padre Pio and asked him to pray for a Polish woman with throat cancer. Within two weeks, she had been cured of her life-threatening disease.

Born Francesco Forgione, Padre Pio grew up in a family of farmers in southern Italy. Twice (1898-1903 and 1910-17) his father worked in Jamaica, New York, to provide the family income.

At the age of 15, Francesco joined the Capuchins and took the name of Pio. He was ordained in 1910 and was drafted during World War I. After he was discovered to have tuberculosis, he was discharged. In 1917 he was assigned to the friary in San Giovanni Rotondo, 75 miles from the city of Bari on the Adriatic.

On September 20, 1918, as he was making his thanksgiving after Mass, Padre Pio had a vision of Jesus. When the vision ended, he had the stigmata in his hands, feet and side.

Life became more complicated after that. Medical doctors, Church authorities and curiosity seekers came to see Padre Pio. In 1924 and again in 1931, the authenticity of the stigmata was questioned; Padre Pio was not permitted to celebrate Mass publicly or to hear confessions. He did not complain of these decisions, which were soon reversed. However, he wrote no letters after 1924. His only other writing, a pamphlet on the agony of Jesus, was done before 1924.

Padre Pio rarely left the friary after he received the stigmata, but busloads of people soon began coming to see him. Each morning after a 5 a.m. Mass in a crowded church, he heard confessions until noon. He took a mid-morning break to bless the sick and all who came to see him. Every afternoon he also heard confessions. In time his confessional ministry would take 10 hours a day; penitents had to take a number so that the situation could be handled. Many of them have said that Padre Pio knew details of their lives that they had never mentioned.

Padre Pio saw Jesus in all the sick and suffering. At his urging, a fine hospital was built on nearby Mount Gargano. The idea arose in 1940; a committee began to collect money. Ground was broken in 1946. Building the hospital was a technical wonder because of the difficulty of getting water there and of hauling up the building supplies. This "House for the Alleviation of Suffering" has 350 beds.

A number of people have reported cures they believe were received through the intercession of Padre Pio. Those who assisted at his Masses came away edified; several curiosity seekers were deeply moved. Like St. Francis, Padre Pio sometimes had his habit torn or cut by souvenir hunters.

One of Padre Pio's sufferings was that unscrupulous people several times circulated prophecies that they claimed originated from him. He never made prophecies about world events and never gave an opinion on matters that he felt belonged to Church authorities to decide. He died on September 23, 1968, and was beatified in 1999.

Comment:

At Padre Pio's canonization Mass in 2002, Pope John Paul II referred to that day's Gospel (Matthew 11:25-30) and said: "The Gospel image of 'yoke' evokes the many trials that the humble Capuchin of San Giovanni Rotondo endured. Today we contemplate in him how sweet is the 'yoke' of Christ and indeed how light the burden are whenever someone carries these with faithful love. The life and mission of Padre Pio testify that difficulties and sorrows, if accepted with love, transform themselves into a privileged journey of holiness, which opens the person toward a greater good, known only to the Lord."

Quote:
"The life of a Christian is nothing but a perpetual struggle against self; there is no flowering of the soul to the beauty of its perfection except at the price of pain" (saying of Padre Pio).

posted by Mike Young @ 11:54 AM