IHS
Eighth Sunday after Pentecost—4
August AD 2019
Ave Maria!
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[Ordinary of the Mass]
[English Text]
[Latin Text]
“Make unto you friends of the mammon of
iniquity, that when you shall fail,
they may receive you into
everlasting dwellings.”
The Gospel today is
highly allegorical. By “allegorical” I mean that it needs to be
interpreted in a symbolic or representative way. The rich man is not a
man at all, rather he represents God Who has entrusted His people with a
varied treasure of gifts.
“The steward is man
[each and every individual man and woman], to whom God has confided the
various goods of soul and body, of grace and nature: faith, intellect,
memory, free will; and five senses, health, strength of body, beauty,
skill, power over others, time and opportunity for good, temporal
riches, and other gifts.”
The phrase “mammon of iniquity” was the Jewish way of referring to
“wealth.” There is no iniquity when we use God’s wealth according to
His plan.
God made each one
of us to make use of His riches for His greater glory. As the
Catechism says: “God made us to show forth His goodness and to
share with us His everlasting happiness in heaven.”
We show God’s
goodness when we make use of His gifts in accordance with His
Commandments—but when we use His gifts contrary to His Commandments we
are “unjust stewards” and we are liable to forfeit that “everlasting
happiness in heaven.”
In the Gospel, the
rich man commends the steward for his prudence—using his goods to
ingratiate himself with the rich man’s debtors—but not,
of course, for the theft of his goods. God, on the other hand, is more
generous with us. As long as we follow his Commandments, He allows us
to use His goods in a way that will ingratiate ourselves with the people
around us. In fact, He commands us to “love our neighbors as
ourselves,” which often enough will require that we expend the gifts He
has given us. Indeed, He makes this personal, saying that when we help
those in need, we are helping Him:
I was hungry, and you gave
me to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink; I was a stranger,
and you took me in: Naked, and you covered me: sick, and you visited
me: I was in prison, and you came to me.
Amen I say to you, as long
as you did it to one of these My least brethren, you did it to Me.
Notice that some of
these works of mercy to our neighbors require little or no money—which
brings us to the fact that we can also use God’s gifts to help our
neighbor spiritually. The Church gives us a list of the various works
of mercy we can perform, both physical (corporal) and spiritual:
-
To instruct the ignorant;
-
To counsel the doubtful;
-
To admonish sinners;
-
To bear wrongs patiently;
-
To forgive offences
willingly;
-
To comfort the afflicted;
-
To pray for the living and
the dead.
Some are physical
and some are spiritual, but all of these rely on using the “assets of
the Master”—the gifts given to us by God.
No Catholic should
ally himself with “the unjust steward”—essentially a thief, who stole
his master’s property. Yet, we must emulate his prudence: “For the
Spirit Himself gives testimony to our spirit, that we are the sons of
God. And if sons, heirs also: heirs indeed of God, and joint heirs with
Christ.”
May it never be said that we failed to exercise our inheritance with
prudence and generosity! May it never be said that we squandered God’s
gifts on immorality, or failed to help those in genuine need.
“For whosoever are
led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons [and the daughters] of God.”
