TWENTY-FOURTH LESSON
The Steward's Foresight.
ST. LUKE 16
There was a certain rich man, who had a steward; and he was informed that this steward had defrauded him. He therefore gave him warning, and demanded his accounts. The steward, foreseeing that he would be dismissed, had the prudence to curry favor with his master's debtors, and thus secured friends for himself, who would receive him into their houses. He called them together, and proposed to them to falsify their accounts, and make out their debts to his master to be less than they were. When his master heard of his device, however angry he was at being cheated, he could not but feel a certain admiration for the man's foresight and worldly wisdom. Our Lord spoke this parable, and gave the interpretation of it. He pointed out to His disciples, that "the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light." That is, people who are careless about securing their salvation, are often very careful to secure their interests here below. They cast about to find means to advance their good estate and prosperity. They try to secure "friends at court," as the saying is; rich benefactors, powerful protectors and patrons, and they will cringe to flatter them, and do all kinds of mean things to secure their favor. They are "wise in their generation," for they take means to succeed, and succeed they do; and they are "wiser than the children of light," for they take more forethought and pains, and undergo greater self-denials, to make a fortune, and to rise in the world, than would have made them inherit a throne in the eternal happiness of Heaven. Blessed Thomas More said it even more strongly. His words were, in effect that many men take more pains to go to Hell, than would have secured their passage to glory. The great minister of a celebrated King of France said bitterly, on his death-bed: "If I had done for God what I have done for that man, I should have been saved three times over; and now, I know not what is going to become of me." So much for the children of this world. On the other hand, what are "the children of light" doing? They, too, have to make friends for the future; yes, for an eternal future in the world to come. "I say to you," our Lord concludes, "make unto you friends of the mammon of iniquity, that when you shall fail, they may receive you into everlasting dwellings." Mammon is a word for money, or wealth. Our Lord speaks of it as the mammon of iniquity, because it is so generally an agent in human sin. But gold is God's creature, not evil in itself. It is like the steel of which you may make a knife, or a sword. You may turn that instrument or that weapon to a good purpose, or to a bad. And so it is with gold and silver. We may prepare for ourselves everlasting blessings with money, either in Heaven or in Hell. What does Judas now think of his thirty pieces of silver? Or the wicked rich man, of all he spent on his purple and fine linen, and his daily sumptuous banquets? On the other hand, is it not now a joy to St. Charles Borromeo, to remember how, while he was on his trial for eternity, he sold an estate for forty thousand gold pieces, and gave away that sum to the poor in a single day? and how he did the same with twenty thousand more, that came to him by a legacy? With what rejoicing was he welcomed into the "everlasting habitations" by his "friends," the poor whom he had benefited?
Then remember the cup of cold water, and the widow's two mites that make a farthing. Remember, too, how much you can do by spiritual almsgiving. No one is so poor in time, that he cannot spend many moments in the day, praying for others. As we walk to and fro, about our daily duties; in little odd fragments of time which no one observes, and no one grudges us—moments that otherwise we might be spending in frivolous talk or idle thoughts—we may be praying for the conversion of sinners, for the success of zealous priests and nuns in their apostolic work, for the Holy Father, the poor souls in Purgatory, for sufferers, for the tempted, and the dying. Not one little ejaculation of such spiritual mercy will be forgotten before God. "When we fail," and are dying away out of life, we shall know it.
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