Saturday in the 31st Week of Ordinary Time 

Luke 16:9-15

Jesus said to his disciples: “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 God and mammon.”  The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all these things and sneered at him. And he said to them, “You justify yourselves in the sight of others, but God knows your hearts; for what is of human esteem is an abomination in the sight of God.”

“I tell you, make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth, so that when it fails, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.”  This verse properly belongs to yesterday’s Gospel reading in which the Lord told one of his darker parables, and acts as part of its moral, if we can call it that.  The term “dishonest” wealth may not make much sense to us, and so we look at the Greek word, which has the meaning of “unrighteous”.  The Lord as good as calls this wealth “unclean” in the ritual sense — something that cannot be touched without rendering the toucher unclean as well, and unfit to worship God.  This in turn begs the question whether the Lord considered all wealth unrighteous or if such a thing as righteous wealth exists.  It is a question to keep in mind as we work our way through the reading.

“I tell you, make friends for yourselves with unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.”  In the context of the parable the Lord has just told, a dishonest steward has been caught out by his employer.  To ease his way into the hearts and homes of others after he is fired, he substantially reduces the enormous sums they owe his employer, who then commends him for his scheming.  As a result of his deductions, the steward can be sure of a welcome into the homes of these men.  The Lord, in the present verse, urges his followers to do something of the kind: to use unrighteous wealth in charity so that the doors of heaven will swing open to them “when it fails”, or gives out.  Thus, the unrighteous wealth becomes righteous wealth through its use.

“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.”  This is a separate but related saying.  It speaks of the consistency of a person’s character.  “If, therefore, you are not trustworthy with dishonest wealth, who will trust you with true wealth?”  That is, if a person does not use the wealth of this world which is entrusted to him for charity, why should God give to him the true wealth of the beatific vision?  Again, the adjective used to describe worldly wealth is “unrighteous”.  The wealth itself is worthless in God’s eyes: “Truly no man can ransom himself, or give to God the price of his life, for the ransom of his life is costly, and can never suffice” (Psalm 49, 7–8).  But through the good works we do with unrighteous wealth we may gain our lives, for, “He that has mercy on the poor, lends to the Lord: and he will repay him” 

(Proverbs 19, 17). 

“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.”  The word “mammon” is a straight transliteration of an Aramaic word for “riches”.  Those who attempt to serve both God and mammon are aware of religion and of the need to worship God and live virtuously, but tell themselves they will do this when they have made their money.  They excuse themselves from charitable works on any grounds they can think of, and say they are too tired from their work to go to Mass on Sunday.  They “compromise” in other ways too, rejecting opportunities to promote virtue and the Faith and even adopting wicked policies and opinions in order to make money now.  But they never do convert.  The pursuit of wealth and of one’s own will — for the two are synonymous — turns into a pursuit of the person by his own evil.  There can be no compromise.  It is God’s will or our own.  Thus, to the money-hungry Pharisees who sneer at the Lord’s teachings, he says, “You justify yourselves in the sight of others, but God knows your hearts; for what is of human esteem is an abomination in the sight of God.”

It is necessary for us to understand that in fact we do not own anything in this world.  We do not own land or houses or even our own bodies, for “every best gift and every perfect gift is from above” (James 1, 17).  All we have is on loan for us to use for the glory of God.  And those who use it in this way will receive a welcome into eternal dwellings.