Luke 16: 9-15
Jesus said to his disciples:
“And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.
“Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”
The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all this, and they ridiculed him. So he said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of others; but God knows your hearts; for what is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God.”
New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989, by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. USCCB approved.
Love Has No Alibi
In his landmark book, Jesus Before Christianity, Fr. Albert Nolan, OP, writes, “The pursuit of wealth is diametrically opposed to the pursuit of God or the ‘kingdom’ of God. Mammon and God are like two masters. If you love and serve the one, you must of necessity reject the other … No compromise is possible.” Fr. Nolan explains that Jesus did not idealize poverty or expect everyone to forsake all possessions. Rather, Jesus was moved with compassion by persons made poor by patterns of selfishness, greed, and hoarding surplus while others are deprived their basic needs.
Jesus is trying to show the Pharisees that they may know the truth and they may practice virtue, but their love of money and their attachments to prestige and possessions inhibit their ability to love. Fr. Nolan insists, “any society that is so structured that some suffer because of their poverty, and others have more than they need, is part of the ‘kingdom’ of Satan.” Jesus calls us to conversion away from the “kingdom of Satan.” Reading this Gospel today, we might look down on the Pharisees (especially as they sneer at Jesus). Are we able to acknowledge the “kingdom of Satan” in our midst or what gets in the way of loving as generously as we can muster? How is God inviting me to stretch my ability to share with others, starting with those in greatest need?
—Marcus Mescher is associate professor of Christian ethics at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the author of The Ethics of Encounter: Christian Neighbor Love as a Practice of Solidarity (Orbis 2020).
Prayer
Just as we are never sure that we love God unless we love others, so we are never sure that we have love at all unless our love issues in works of justice. And I do not mean works of justice in a merely individualistic sense. I mean three things: first, a basic attitude of respect for all people which forbids us ever to use them as instruments for our own profit; second, a firm resolve never to profit from, or allow ourselves to be suborned by, positions of power deriving from privilege, for to do so, even passively, is equivalent to active oppression. To be drugged by the comforts of privilege is to become contributors to injustice as silent beneficiaries of the fruits of injustice; third, an attitude not simply of refusal but of counterattack against injustice; a decision to work with others toward the dismantling of unjust social structures so that the weak, the oppressed, the marginalized of this world may be set free.
—Fr. Pedro Arrupe, SJ
Pray with the Pope
Pray with the monthly prayer intentions of the pope.