Sunday of Week 25 of Ordinary Time (Year C)

Commentary on Amos 8:4-7; 1 Timothy 2:1-8; Luke 16:1-13

Each of the readings today makes a separate, but related, point:

• A warning from the prophet Amos on swindling and cheating in business;
• An exhortation to pray for those in authority;
• How to make use of our material goods.

A world of injustice
During the 8th century BC, the prophet Amos arrived in the prosperous kingdom of Israel. Behind the glitter of political and religious life, he saw a world of injustice and exploitation of the poor. He wrote his denunciations long before the time of Christ, but they sound perfectly familiar to anyone living in any prosperous city of our own day. Cheating on weights and measures, tampering with scales (now calculators and computers!), inflating the value of goods and deflating the value of money, buying up the poor for money (“Every man has his price”), finding someone gullible enough to buy what is basically trash, and so on. Practically every year, in nearly every country, corruption among the rich and politically powerful is reported. And for the most part, it involves far greater sums of money and a higher level of criminality than the procession of petty criminals that pass through our courts daily and who are portrayed with such disdain and condescension in our media.

In over 2,000 years of ‘civilisation’ and ‘religion’, hardly anything has changed. In spite of social welfare, the poor and the needy continue to be exploited and trampled on. The very existence of social welfare is the result of social imbalances in the distribution of a community’s wealth. And yet some are even critical of the existence of social welfare, saying “Let them work hard like the rest of us!” One is reminded of the late Bishop Helder Camara of Recife in Brazil. He was an outspoken critic of injustice in his society. He used to say: “When I give money to the poor, they call me a saint; when I ask why they are poor, they call me a Communist.”

We are all familiar with the dramatic crimes involving robberies and shootouts on our streets by ‘gangsters’ and ‘thugs’. But far more money is disappearing—immorally and illegally—in plush air-conditioned offices by those oh-so-respectable people wearing expensive suits and tooling around in luxury cars.

Serious imbalances
Such an abuse of the use of money and property results in serious imbalances both in our own society and in societies elsewhere. The world is divided now into North (rich) and South (poor), between a First and a Third (and even a Fourth) World.

So many are driven to get rich. “What’s wrong with being rich?” people ask. Catholics can be, and sometimes are, very rich. But is it possible that no one can really become rich without (many) others being made or kept poor? To be defined as rich in our society means having more, much more, than the average person.

But some may argue, what do purely social and economic matters have to do with the Church and religion? What business has the Church meddling in the market place? Ask Amos that question. Ask Jesus that question:

I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God. (Matt 19:24)

It is not just because the man is rich, but because to be regarded as rich he must have goods which are denied in justice to others. We cannot say we love God if we do not love our brothers. Such a person cannot be in the Kingdom:

Lord, lord, open to us. But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I do not know you.’ (Matt 25:11-12)

To be actively unjust to others is to deny love to them. It is not enough ‘just’ to pray, as the Apostle James tells us:

For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead. (James 2:26)

Put in the vernacular, an example might be, “I’m really sorry for your trouble, but I will pray for you at Mass on Sunday.”

In so far as economic matters touch on moral issues—justice, the dignity of the individual, basic human rights—then they certainly concern the Christian and the church community. To be an agent—actively or passively—of injustice is to deny love to another.

Luck of the draw
In our capitalist society built on competitiveness, we seem to accept that there are (some) winners and (many) losers. We can even attribute it to ‘the luck of the draw’. In that case, we basically accept the situation as ‘normal’. Many of us Christians have a deep (if largely unconscious) need to become more aware of just what Christian love and compassion actually entails. It can never be accepted as ‘normal’ for people to live in inadequate housing, to have to work in intolerable conditions, to have to work twelve or more hours a day seven days a week just to make ends meet, to have to endure hunger or malnutrition over long periods or to have to sell their bodies in prostitution or near-slavery.

Nor, while people live in such conditions, can it be accepted as ‘normal’ that others live in comfort and luxury, especially if the source of their wealth comes from the exploitation of those who are living below the level of human dignity. No aware Christian can accept such a situation or, still less, be a contributor to such imbalances. Unfortunately, many of us are, wittingly or unwittingly, contributors. We show it by our own frenetic participation in trying to climb to the top and pushing our children to the top.

It is not a question, of course, of advocating total equality. On many levels, people are quite unequal. But on the level of dignity and rights, no one can claim superiority over another person. Any diminution of human dignity (which demands a certain minimum material standard of living) cannot be tolerated by the conscientious and loving Christian. Some have been given more talents than others (and the Gospel clearly recognises this), but these gifts are to be used not to get more for oneself, but to offer more for the building up of the Kingdom community. The greater our gifts, the greater our responsibility to share them with those who have less.

Praying for our leaders
The exhortation, then, in the Second Reading to pray especially for those in authority, in this context, makes sense. Those in authority do need our prayers that the power entrusted to them is used for the well-being of every person in the community. Considering that the presumed writer of this letter (Paul or some other Christian leader) was himself the victim of savage persecution by some authorities, he is not telling us to give our unqualified support to all the policies of our leaders. The Church can never, and and should never, identify itself fully with any civil administration. At best, there should be what Cardinal Jaime Sin of Manila used to call “critical co-operation”. But at worst, it may also require an out and out denunciation of an administration’s immoral practices and policies.

Stewardship
And so the Gospel speaks about stewardship. A steward is a person who is made responsible to handle the goods and property of his employer. The steward in the Gospel today was a bad steward because he was wasteful of his master’s property. He was going to be fired so he took steps to guarantee his future employability, and:

…his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly…

Jesus obviously told this story not to encourage dishonesty, but to draw attention to the foresight of the steward. He continues:

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.

Jesus’ choice of a “manager” or ‘steward’ in today’s passage is altogether to the point. We need to be constantly reminded that we are the stewards and never the owners of what we possess. We have no absolute right to anything we have. “I can do what I like with my money and property because it’s mine” is not a statement any committed Christian can make. So the question of a successful life is not “How much did you make?”, but “How did you use what you had to creative purposes for the general welfare of all?” That is the way to make the friends Jesus talks about in the Gospel.

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Monday of Week 24 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on 1 Timothy 2:1-8

Paul continues his advice to his young colleague and companion, Timothy. Today he urges that prayers of petition, intercession and thanksgiving be made for people everywhere, but especially for those in authority and government.

According to the New American Bible:

“This marked insistence that the liturgical prayer of the community concern itself with the needs of all, whether Christian or not, and especially of those in authority, may imply that a disposition existed at Ephesus to refuse prayer for pagans. In actuality, such prayer aids the community to achieve peaceful relationships with non-Christians (v 2) and contributes to their salvation, since it derives its value from the presence within the community of Christ who is the one and only Saviour of all (vv 3-6). The vital apostolic mission to the Gentiles concerning Christ’s purpose of the universal salvation should be reflected in the prayer of the community (v 7) which should be unmarred by internal dissension (v 8; see Matt 5:23)”.

Paul urges Timothy that:

…supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone…

He includes kings and others in authority, so that the Christians may be able to:

…lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.

Although it looks like a very ordinary prayer, the end may reflect some apprehensions about future developments.

Anyone who reads the Acts of the Apostles knows just how much trouble the Christians experienced at the hands of civil and religious authorities. But it is possible that the words were written when the madman Nero was emperor. He would unleash a ferocious attack on the Christians. And both Peter and Paul were to lose their lives as martyrs under this crazed ruler.

But rather than subject rulers to abuse or retaliatory action, Paul urges that prayers be said for them. Paul’s teaching is also in line with the advice that we saw from Jesus in a recent Gospel reading about loving those who hate and persecute us and to pray for them (see Matt 5:43-48).

At the same time, Paul believed that generally legal authorities should be obeyed and respected. He told the Romans:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval, for it is God’s agent for your good. (Rom 13:1-4)

Sometimes, of course, doing “what is good” may mean not obeying an authority and calling for civil disobedience.

Paul tells Timothy to pray with all ‘godliness’. ‘Godliness’, together with ‘godly’, is a key word in the Pastoral Letters and occurs eight times in this Letter, once in 2 Timothy and once in Titus, but nowhere else in the writings of Paul. It implies a good and holy life, with special emphasis on its Source, a deep reverence for God.

To pray in this way is right and acceptable to God our Saviour, who wants every person to be saved and reach the full knowledge of truth. The two elements here are really complementary, two sides of the same coin. To be ‘saved’ is to become the whole person that God wants one to be, and central to that wholeness is the grasp and acceptance of what is fully true. The Way of Jesus is a way to wholeness and the Way of Jesus is Truth and Life. But wholeness and truth are never fully in our grasp. To get there is the goal of our whole lifespan.

That God wants all to experience this wholeness, sometimes referred to as ‘salvation’ or ‘redemption’, is surely the only satisfactory meaning that can be given to the death of Jesus, who died for every single person. It helps to counteract the ‘selective salvation’ of some who claim that God has decided whom he will save and who will be rejected. These people appeal to words of Paul in the Letter to the Romans:

So then he has mercy on whomever he chooses, and he hardens the heart of whomever he chooses….Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one object for special use and another for ordinary use?
(Rom 9:18,21)

This is not at all to say that God predestines us to salvation or damnation, but only that some by their behaviour call out the mercy of God and others bring about their rejection by their behaviour. God wants all to be saved, but no one is forced to accept salvation. It is a gift and a grace offered to all, but not necessarily accepted by all.

Because, as Paul continues:

For there is one God;
there is also one mediator between God and humankind,
Christ Jesus, himself human,
who gave himself as a ransom for all…

That there is only one God is the basic belief of Judaism, confessed every day by devout Jews in the Shema prayer (Deut 6:4). The Greek word for ‘ransom’ (antilutron) was used most commonly to describe the price paid to redeem a slave. Similarly, Christ paid the ransom price of his own life to free us from the slavery of sin. This was the greatest love that a person can show, and:

…this was attested at the right time.

By his willingness to die for the whole human race, Christ showed the human race that God wanted everybody to be saved. He was the Father’s ‘witness’ all through his life to the love of God for all of us, but never so supremely as at the moment of his dying on the cross. The Greek word for ‘witness’ is the same as for ‘martyr’ (martus). Jesus is the Supreme Witness, the Supreme Martyr.

Now Paul has been appointed “herald and apostle” of this great message from God made in and through Jesus, and has become a teacher to the Gentiles “in faith and in truth”. A herald is one given the authority to make an important public proclamation. In his book, Models of the Church, then Father (ultimately Cardinal) Avery Dulles SJ lists one of the models as “Church as Herald”. The mission of Paul has been passed on to all of us baptised. It is something we have to do both collectively and individually. And what Paul has been called on to testify is that, through his death, Christ has bridged the gap between God and humanity and made salvation available to every person.

Finally, Paul tells them that he desires:

…that in every place the men should pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or argument.

He asks that they lift up their hands reverently in prayer, with no anger or feuding. A feuding community does not provide a conducive environment for prayer.

The next verses of the letter will not be read in our liturgy. They deal with the very submissive role that Paul says women are supposed to accept in the prayer assembly. Thankfully, we have made some progress in this area, but we are not the whole way there yet for full recognition and integration.

So, the reading is telling us that the true Christian spirit is not to rid the world of those who are the enemies of Christianity. When we pray, it is not to ask God to punish or destroy our enemies (as was sometimes done in the Old Testament), but rather to pray that they may change and see things differently, i.e. see things in God’s way, and become faithful to truth, love and justice.

We, as Christians, are bold enough to think that in the message of Jesus, we are on the path of truth, and the lived experience of the Christian life, especially that of the saints, bears it out. This was what motivated Paul to be:

…a herald and an apostle.

We, too, are called to the same task.

Let us remember too, not just during Mass, but very regularly to pray for others, especially those whom we see as a source of trouble in our lives, people we do not like and who do not like us, people who seem to ‘have it in for us’—difficult superiors or relatives or work colleagues.

Praying in all sincerity that God will shower them with his love, his grace and blessings can really bring about a change in them. This has been attested to again and again.

Even more importantly, it changes us. It is difficult to hate a person you are continually praying for. It helps to dissipate anger and brings a special kind of peace. It changes the way we relate to them. And it is a relatively easy thing to do. Try it!

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