The master commended that dishonest steward

Am 8,4-7; Ps 112; 1 Tm 2,1-8; Lk 16,1-13
22 SEPTEMBER

Life is a present in which the future is being prepared, it is time that must generate blessed eternity, it is the present moment from which the after is inevitably conceived. It is enough to get distracted for a single moment and the after becomes irretrievably compromised. It is enough to surrender to a single sin and often we no longer get out of the path of death. Youth is wasted and adulthood remains disoriented forever. The present must be experienced as the greatest grace of God. Saint Paul shouted to the Corinthians that it is the favourable moment of salvation. Grace passes. The heart opens, it enters. We close it, nobody knows if there will be a return. This is the reason why we must live the present paying great attention not to waste any grace of the Lord. Does a young man know today that delivering twenty precious years of his life to formation is the greatest grace of God? But if they are God’s grace can they be squandered in alcohol, drugs, idleness, vices, amusements, moral and spiritual disorder? A grace wasted by us often becomes also wasted grace for the others.

Jesus, the Father’s gift of salvation to his people, was a grace wasted for many sons of Israel. This grace not accepted in conversion and faith was also the cause of the destruction of the Holy City. We are not responsible for grace only for us, but for the whole world. A young man spoils the grace of formation. With his science he could have invented something excellent for the whole of humanity. He has wasted grace, the earth lacks a grace of salvation. Wasted grace always impoverishes the world. Even Paradise is impoverished. A wasted grace can open the doors of hell. The Master praises the dishonest administrator. He does not praise him for his dishonesty, but because he knows how to use cunning for his future. It is not a matter of the eternal future, but about the future over time. If all the “evildoers” of the earth put so much acumen to procure their eternal future, as they put to give vain well-being to their future in time, God should widen the spaces of his Paradise. And yet for futility, vanity and what does not last, cunning and shrewdness are used well, while for what it is worth, lasts and is eternal good it is as if man were without intelligence and devoid of all wisdom. Foolishness produces an eternal evil.

Then he also said to his disciples, “A rich man had a steward who was reported to him for squandering his property. He summoned him and said, ‘What is this I hear about you? Prepare a full account of your stewardship, because you can no longer be my steward.’ The steward said to himself, ‘What shall I do, now that my master is taking the position of steward away from me? I am not strong enough to dig and I am ashamed to beg. I know what I shall do so that, when I am removed from the stewardship, they may welcome me into their homes.’ He called in his master’s debtors one by one. To the first he said, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He replied, ‘One hundred measures of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Here is your promissory note. Sit down and quickly write one for fifty.’ Then to another he said, ‘And you, how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘One hundred kors of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Here is your promissory note; write one for eighty.’ And the master commended that dishonest steward for acting prudently. “For the children of this world are more prudent in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. I tell you, make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth, so that when it fails, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings. The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones; and the person who is dishonest in very small matters is also dishonest in great ones. If, therefore, you are not trustworthy with dishonest wealth, who will trust you with true wealth? If you are not trustworthy with what belongs to another, who will give you what is yours? No servant can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”

Every moment of our life is grace, because with it we can merit the blessed eternity of glory tomorrow. But if we, in our wickedness – it is of the wickedness and evilness of the heart turning the whole of revelation upside down – we say that Paradise is not the fruit of the present, because it is a gift that God makes to all, then the truth of the present like a tree that must mature eternal fruits, falls. It is the triumph of foolishness and ignorance.

Mother of God, Angels and Saints arrange that no moment of the present is wasted.