Year I

31st Week in Ordinary Time, Friday

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In today’s Gospel we see the first part of Our Lord’s teaching on the need to be faithful and honest even in small things. He begins with the negative example of a steward squandering his employer’s property and being put on notice that he’s to be dismissed. The steward doesn’t want to abandon the good life he’s had, and he doesn’t want to become a beggar, so he starts making deals with the very people he and his former employer had been cheating in order to win their favor. When he adjusts the billing for each person it’s because he’s been helping his employer to deceive them all along. Now that the employer is firing him, he’s using that fact to his advantage: his former employer can’t do anything about it without revealing that he too was part of the deception, and by giving his employer’s clients these “discounts” he is winning favor for himself. The soon-to-be former employer can’t help but admire his cunning (probably because the steward learned it from him).

Perhaps a better translation for Jesus’ evaluation of this could be that the children of this world are cleverer in dealing with those of their own kind that those who are not of this kind. He’s not giving us an example to follow, but an example to be on guard against and avoid. The children of the light don’t act this way and shouldn’t.

We’ll consider how they should act in tomorrow’s reflection. For now, let’s examine our dealings with others and see whether we’re more a child of this age (bad) or a child of the light (good).

Readings: Romans 15:14–21; Psalm 98:1–4; Luke 16:1–8.

31st Week in Ordinary Time, Wednesday

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In today’s Gospel Our Lord presents the need to renounce the two most precious things in our life in order to be able to successfully follow him: our family and our life as it stands without him. If he calls us to follow him, it means putting other things on hold and embracing sacrifice and difficulty for something greater. When he teaches us today to hate our family and life as it stands he does not mean abandoning them or harming them; he means practicing a healthy detachment from them where God’s will comes first because God knows best and wants the best for everyone, including those we love.

If we don’t form this healthy detachment he warns us we may not have the spiritual resources to finish what we started or to succeed. He uses two images: a construction project discontinued for lack of funds, and a battle lost for not have sufficient forces to win or the foresight to seek a diplomatic solution instead. Everyone wants to build something with their life; Our Lord wants us to build a life with him, and he knows that requires the spiritual resources that only come from detachment, sacrifice, and discernment. Our life is a battle at times, a struggle to succeed, and detachment, sacrifice, and discernment are what enable us to succeed in what truly matters: love for God and love for others.

Let’s examine our lives today with the Lord’s help and see whether anything in our lives might be preventing us from being the success he wants us to be.

Readings: Romans 13:8–10; Psalm 112:1b–2, 4–5, 9; Luke 14:25–33. See also 15th Week in Ordinary Time, Monday.

31st Week in Ordinary Time, Tuesday

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In today’s Gospel Our Lord responds to someone dining with him who speaks about the beatitude of Kingdom of God with the parable of a king inviting people to a great feast. They’d already been invited to the feast, and now servants were sent to tell them it was ready. Obviously these invitees had a closer relationship with the king than just being his loyal subjects: they were invited to come, and didn’t feel obliged to come. The invitees ask to be excused, but really just gave excuses not to come: they’d known when the great dinner would be held and had made other plans. They either didn’t want to go or were simply indifferent about going: that showed what they thought of their king, both as their ruler and as their friend. Something or someone else came first.

Abandoned by his friends, the king invited other members of his kingdom, but not on the basis of friendship, just on the basis of a benevolence a king owes his people. In the end he also invites his subjects who are complete strangers to him, perhaps people not even a part of his kingdom at all. They benefit from the great dinner, but they cannot take the place of those the king wanted to partake of it, his invitees, those he wanted to acknowledge as his friends.

The Kingdom of God is not just something in the future: Christ the King invites us right now to come to the great feast with every celebration of the Eucharist, to show us how much we mean to him and to lavish spiritual joy and refreshment on us. Does a vacation rental come first? Taking the new car for a Sunday drive? Spending the weekend with your spouse? Let’s show Our Lord what he means to us by coming to his banquet frequently, knowing that someday we’ll enjoy a great and eternal feast with him and with our family and friends. Let’s also be those servants who go out and invite others to come to the feast which is already prepared for them and waiting.

Readings: Romans 12:5–16b; Psalm 131:1b–e, 2–3; Luke 14:15–24.

30th Week in Ordinary Time, Friday

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In today’s Gospel Our Lord knows what’s on everyone’s mind, and he doesn’t duck the issue: is this Rabbi going to start breaking the rules again? The Pharisees are watching him and judging him. A dropsical man is sitting there, not even asking Jesus to heal him, maybe because it is the Sabbath. Dropsy is a painful swelling, an edema, and not something you’d want to put off healing. When Our Lord takes the Pharisees to task for possibly having a problem with healing someone suffering in that condition when they’d have no problem rescuing their son or cattle from falling into a well, he is driving home that God did not intend the Sabbath as a moment to rest from helping someone suffering or in need, and common sense proves that.

The Pharisees had no response. At least this time they didn’t decide to try and trip him up as on past occasions when he contradicted their teaching, because it was hard to refute his logic. In today’s society there are many things considered as givens because no one has the courage, upon examination, to question them. They remain with the status quo because it is more comfortable, but sometimes we need to go out beyond our comfort zone and embrace greater and uncomfortable truths that are the path to greater fulfillment. That doesn’t mean inventing new truths, but discovering the enduring ones behind everything we think and do.

If you feel scrutinized today because of your beliefs, don’t be afraid to turn that into an opportunity to share the Truth that will set those people free.

Readings: Romans 9:1–5; Psalm 147:12–15, 19–20; Luke 14:1–6.

30th Week in Ordinary Time, Thursday

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In today’s Gospel Our Lord discounts the empty threat of the Pharisees who say that Herod is out to get him. It may be true, but it is not part of his Father’s plan that he should die at the hands of Herod. Our Lord knows the designs of His Father are far greater than the designs of scheming men. He knows in his earthly mission that he will be bringing to fulfillment the mission of every prophet that testified to his coming: to bear God’s message to his people, and to suffer death for it due to their lack of faith. In his case, it’ll be different: when he mentions that “on the third day I accomplish my purpose” he is probably referring to the Resurrection, after which he’ll resume his place at the Father’s right side, and, as St. Paul reminds us in today’s First Reading, intercedes for us. Death will no longer work to silence the Word of God.

At the same time Our Lord is saddened considering all the prophets who’d gone before him and Jerusalem’s resistance to believing in him, both as God and as Messiah. At the heart of Jerusalem, David’s city and a testimony to the Messiah and all the prophecies concerning him, the Temple represented God’s presence among his people. Now God was present in the flesh, in Christ. When those who didn’t believe in Jesus turned their back on God’s designs through his Son it wasn’t long before that Temple was destroyed (70 A.D.) and never rebuilt: believers are what count, not buildings.

Our Lord is interceding for us right now at the right hand of the Father. Ask him for what you need, but ask him especially for faith and insight into whatever part of his plan he wants you to help him with. Believers not only second his plan, they help with it.

Readings: Romans 8:31b–39; Psalm 109:21–22, 26–27, 30–31; Luke 13:31–35.