How can money build eternal friendships?
The unjust steward was praised not for his dishonesty, but for his foresight. Christ urges us to use our passing possessions for eternal gain.
The unjust steward was praised not for his dishonesty, but for his foresight. Christ urges us to use our passing possessions for eternal gain.
Editor’s Notes
In this part, Fr Coleridge tells us:
How the use of wealth can bind us to God and win us heavenly friends.
That spiritual goods alone are truly our own and fit to sustain eternal life.
Why even worldly men shame us by their diligence and foresight.
He shows us that our stewardship now determines the welcome we will receive in eternity.
For more on the context of this episode, see Part I.
The Unjust Steward
The Preaching of the Cross, Part II
Chapter VIII
St. Luke xvi. 1-13
Story of the Gospels, § 115
Burns and Oates, London, 1887
Who are the friends we are to make?
If we ask ourselves who these friends may be whose loving aid we may secure to ourselves by the wise use of the dross of this world’s wealth, we may find more than one answer.
For the wealth of the world, the mammon of iniquity, as our Lord calls it, may be used even directly for the service of God in the building of churches or altars, the decorations of the sanctuary, the furniture of holy vessels for Sacrifice, and the like. Nothing can be a higher use of gold and silver and precious stones than their application in the service and worship of God. Christian men have thus used the mammon of the world since the beginning of the Church, and their sacrifices, however worthy and rare in themselves, have always been understood as included in the blessing which fell from our Lord’s lips when Magdalene broke her box of most precious ointment over His Head at the Supper at Bethany.
The same devotion has covered the land with houses in which the servants of God may dwell to offer to Him, in sacred retirement, the unceasing homage of the practice of religious rules, and the songs and praises which echo back from the lower world the endless worship of the heavenly hosts. It has shed itself out in other ways, less directly, but not less truly, concerned with the homage due to Him, as in hospitals, and institutions of beneficence, schools, asylums, orphanages, retreats for the aged and infirm and destitute, even the most afflicted, and, to outward sense, the most uninviting—lepers, lunatics, maniacs, the imbecile, the subjects of the most loathsome and the most contagious diseases.
Ways of doing this
In these ways we make God Himself our friend, because they are all directed to Him, mediately or immediately. The same may be said of the honour that is done to Him in the saints, in various ways, or again, of the service which we may render to Him in the persons of the poor or miserable or ignorant, the spiritual and corporal works of mercy, or by almsdeeds, Masses, and works of satisfaction for the relief of the holy souls in Purgatory.
And perhaps the most obvious of all the uses which can be made of the wealth of this world for this holy purpose, is the expenditure of money in almsdeeds to the poor. In all these ways the mammon of iniquity may be employed, and by means of its employment we make friends for ourselves of those who have a right to the Kingdom of Heaven, and who by their intercessions may help us in our own time of need by opening to us the gates of mercy and of the homes of eternal rest. This is the true use which we are intended to make of this mammon, which is called the mammon of iniquity because it is so often the instrument of wickedness, or the result of injustice.
It is not meant that it is enough to spend unjust gains in charitable ways, if we have not fully repaired any injustice of which we may have been guilty. The steward in the parable acted unjustly to his lord, and so his kindness to his lord’s debtors would not have delivered him from sin. He is put before us as an example of discernment and prudence, not of justice, and the point in his history which is impressed on us is that he made the best of his opportunities, and by that means secured himself from destitution.
Wisdom of the children of this world
The words of our Lord, ‘for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light,’ seem to fall from His sacred lips as a passing remark, and He does not dwell on them nor expand them. They are obviously the explanation of the reason for which the lord in the parable commended the unjust steward.
Not of course that the commendation was an instance of the superior wisdom of worldlings, but that the steward had shown that superior wisdom in what he had done, and this the lord, himself a man of the world, could not help applauding as a clever action. The words themselves show that perfect intelligence of mankind in our Lord of which St. John speaks when he says, that ‘He knew what was in man.’ He knew not only the workings of all the lower elements in human nature in those who are not what He calls the children of light, but also how much there is of human foolishness and weakness in the children of light themselves.
It is not said that the children of light are prudent and thoughtful, and the children of this world still more so, in their generation. The children of light have too often not the common prudence and forethought which reason requires, while in the children of the world these qualities are exercised in a high degree of perfection. The ends of the two classes of men are very different, but it is wisdom, and not prudence, that guides us in the choice of ends. The two classes have indeed different ends before them, and no doubt the ends pursued by the children of light are the only true ends which men can reasonably seek.
But when we compare the two classes as to the means which they use to gain their ends, the diligence, the cleverness, the perseverance, the energy, the concentration which they bring to the use of their means and opportunities, then the truth of our Lord’s remark becomes but too clear and certain.
Look at the care and thought which the man who studies to be rich brings to the choice of investments for his money, always seeking for what is at once safest and most profitable, and compare it to the reckless haphazard way in which the Christian spends his time, only anxious to get through it somehow or other in the most pleasant and least laborious manner!
Look at the care which the man of business takes to keep his accounts well balanced day by day, or week by week, the pains he takes to set mistakes right, and to get rid of debts and encumbrances which hinder his prosperous career, and compare it with the negligence of so many about the care of their conscience, with its accounts uninspected and accumulating day after day, and yet left unexamined, to meet them at the end of his life!
Look at the indifference to present toil and temporary hardships and inconveniences with which professional men are content to tie themselves to desks or to some laborious profession for the greater part of their life, for the sake of the hope, so seldom realized, that they may gain a few years of enjoyment and ease at the end of their days!
And compare this with the way in which so many of the children of light let themselves be engrossed in the most frivolous and empty pleasures, which are often far worse than empty and frivolous, and put aside for them the thought of being rich unto God, and labouring for the eternal goods! But it would be a long meditation indeed that could fully exhaust these words of our Lord.
‘In their generation’
The words which are translated in our version by the English words, ‘in their generation,’ are very important for the intelligence of this saying, and require some explanation.
The proper rendering would be ‘unto,’ or ‘towards’ their generation, and the word generation means the men of their time, or of their kind. What is said is that the children of this world are more prudent in dealing with the men of the class of life to which they belong, than the children of light in dealing with their own ‘generation,’ in the same sense.
The steward understood the men he had to deal with in his lord and his lord’s debtors, and so got out of his difficulty by playing his cards well with them. The children of light should act as he did, so far as to use their opportunities, their means, the occasions which meet them, so as to escape, by the use thus made of them, the dangers which threaten them, so as to provide thereby safely for the future which awaits them. The generation for which they live is God and His saints, or His friends the poor.
We are all under sentence of dismissal from our present office of stewards of our Lord’s goods in this life. We are so to use them, in the time that remains to us, as to make ourselves stand well with the generation into whose presence we are hastening, there to abide for ever.
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The Unjust Steward
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I really liked the article, but the prejudices of the time continue to shine through against "lepers, lunatics, maniacs, the imbecile, the subjects of the most loathsome and the most contagious diseases."
Leprosy doesn't easily spread from person to person, if it spreads at all as there are no scientific studies showing this to be the case. It is strongly associated with poverty and is a failure of the skin to heal properly resulting in disfiguring lesions. It likely caused by poor nutrition, hygiene and other factors.
Lunatics, maniacs and imbeciles often have physiological and toxicological reasons for being unwell. In the same way woman who had been sexually abused were labelled hysterical by the medical professional, they treat those who have been poisoned (often by doctors) with the same gaslighting and horrid treatment.
Koch's logical postulates for germs as the cause of any disease haven't been fulfilled for most claimed causative "pathogens", so we cannot even begin to discuss contagion in the sense proposed by 19th century scientists. https://open.substack.com/pub/mikestone/p/viroliegy-101-kochs-postulates
But even if we did we could only point out the almost complete failure of transmission through natural transmission routes and the "scientists" reliance upon uncontrolled experiments in which the injection of un-purified substances into the "infected" subjects (humans/animals; which doesn't simulate what happens in nature) to prove contagion.