A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. Another time, our lord said to his disciples, man to him and said, what is this that I hear about you? Give me an account of your service for it is about to be ended. He was firing it. The manager then thought to himself, what am I going to do?
My employer is sure to fire me. I cannot dig ditches, and I'm ashamed to be a beggar. I have it, he said. Here is a way to make sure that people will take me into their homes when I am fired by this manager. Smart man.
So the manager called in each of his master's debtors and said to the first one, how much do you owe my master? Man replied, a 100 jars of oil. The manager said, take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it 50. Then he said to a second debtor, how much do you owe? The man answered, a 100 measures of wheat.
The manager said, take your invoice and write 80. Now this is a very odd part about it. The owner then gave his devious, that's this translation. The owner then gave his devious employee credit. He praised him for being enterprising.
Why? Because the worldly now this is our lord speaking. Why? Because the worldly take more initiative than the otherworldly when it comes to dealing with their own kind. And this is the gospel of the lord.
Praise to you, lord Jesus Christ. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. And let me hasten to add, it is a bit mysterious because on the surface, it appears that the manager, the boss, whoever he was, was cheating. He saw that he was going to be fired, lose his job, so he figured, well, I'll make friends with my bosses' debtors. So he gives them a little bit of a deduction on their debts, and he collects the money.
He at least collects a 50% and better on his boss's debtors, which if you're bankrupt, isn't a very that's a pretty good deal. Now as I the the mysterious part of this thing on the surface is that our lord praises what seems to be a crooked employee because it it it appears that this employee has defrauded. Not only has he been guilty of stealing or whatever he was, but now he's he's writing off his boss's debts at a pretty good discount. And yet our lord praises this man. And he then says that those people who are worldly minded in dealing with their own kind are smarter than those dealing with the with the with the truths of salvation, with the eternal verities.
That's what it appears to be. Well, all kinds of commentaries have been written on this, and yours is as good as any, so make it make out of it what you want. But, you know, a lot of it can be made out of it. First of all, these debtors, to collect as much as the man does collect from those debts, which appear to have been bad debts, wasn't a bad deal at all. Not a bad deal at all.
Secondly, the man may have had authority to make those discounts, just as a manager in a store would have maybe the authority to make some arrangements about somebody paying debts. And there's a lot of ways of getting in and out of this business, but who cares? Take your pick. Figure it out for yourself. The one thing that was clear, our lord is saying, we are dumb.
We are dumb when it comes to dealing with our kind. We are not at all as smart as worldly people dealing with worldly people. And he says that in in in criticism, in a pejoric criticism, and it's true. Let me give you an example. If I dare use it, then I dare.
Would you invite a man or a woman to come in to teach biology without making sure they knew biology or some biology or mathematics, or calculus, or a computer, which we're not teaching to six year olds. Someone said it's it's mighty handy to have a six year old in the family. The child can teach the parents how to use a computer. Would you invite anybody to teach your kids who didn't know what they were supposed to be teaching? Would you go to a person for legal advice who had no experience in being a lawyer?
Would you go to a doctor would you go to a human being to be medicated unless you had some kind of assurance that the man or the woman was a a competent to do it. And yet when we come to such things as religion, morality, the truths of religion, every man, every woman is his own authority. Everybody. Everybody's a self made moralist, a self theologian. Everybody knows what's right or wrong.
How do they know it? By my conscience. What is what do you mean by conscience? You have lost a friend by asking the question. I mean that.
Just try it if you think I'm kidding. Try it. Try it today. Ask ask somebody anything at all whether they say something's right or wrong. That's a very interesting remark you made.
You said that that was wrong or that was right. I don't care which way it goes. And they'll say, yes. You'll say, that's interesting. Why do you say that?
Why do you think it's right or wrong? Why? And they say, well, that's what my conscience tells me. Then you put in the the crushing question. Well, what is your conscience?
What do you understand by conscience? And then and then get running away because they may be carving you with by a two before because you're asking a very impertinent question. Of course, the question has to be answered if what they've said makes any sense. But, of course, what they've said makes, in most instances, no sense. In other words, nonsense.
And much of this is abroad. I must I must follow my conscience. You bet your life you have to follow your conscience. Conscience is the absolute ultimate norm of morality. I know that.
I got that with my mother's milk. At least she told me that. She put some extra genes in it. But what in the world do you mean by this thing conscience? And furthermore, what are the responsibilities of a conscience?
Is it an automatic thing, or what is it? Now what I'm coming back to this is we dealing that we are not as smart in dealing with the affairs of eternity, with the with the enormously important truths of morality, the truths of religion, we are not nearly as smart in dealing with these things as we are with worldly people dealing with worldly affairs. We aren't. And you say, well, how how can you make sense out of this? Well, I don't know how you make sense out of it because I don't think you can.
If you say the most important thing in life is to know why you're living, what is life all about? For heaven's sake. All the trials, the troubles, the joys, the hopes, the aspirations. And there are a lot of joys in living in life. But believe me, to every wave, there's a trough as well as a peak and a crest.
So what sense do you make out of all of this? We labor. We sweat. We go after things, and and Francis Thompson writes the hound of heaven. Read it.
Takes you about four and a half minutes, maybe five and three quarters minutes. It's the time. But he says the whole business there. We we try all of these things, and life can get very thin and empty because sooner or later, you say, what is it all about? Or are you going to do and write what a friend of mine wrote in the guest book over at Marie a Lot?
Life's a bowl of cherries. What the hell's the use? I knew the man very well who wrote it, and the guest master asked me to translate it into German. And I refused to do so, being totally unable to do so. But this this is the very basic question.
It's the second question in the penny catechism, which isn't being asked today in most of our courses in so called religious education. Not even asked, much less answered. Why did God make you? We are not smart, and our Lord blames us for this. Anybody who wants to do anything anything has to get a certain amount of knowledge, information, training.
You have to develop your skill, we say. A good cook has a has a book with his favorite recipes in it and tries to follow them. But on the other hand, when we come to religion, everybody's his own theologian. It's his own you make your own Catholicism. You pick and you choose.
It's a smorgasbord. That's what it's being called today, smorgasbord, Cafeteria service. Pick out the salad and the juice you wanna put on it according to your own delectation and delight. Following, of course, your conscience. Make sure you follow your conscience.
And above all, be be sure you're motivated by love. If you do this, everything is fine. No problems. Of course, you won't have any problems. I think of the two pigs wallowing in the mud as new the New Yorker had it some time ago.
One pig is saying to the other, I feel awfully comfortable in here, don't you? They didn't know any better. Let us take our lords. Being a Catholic Christian is not an easy thing, but it's not an it's not an impossible thing. All our lord asks us to be is ourselves.
That's all. Not to go through the world blind and above all, not to be led by the blind because then our lord says, you both fall into the ditch. And you'll notice what we sang here in the hallelujah verse, that we may live the life according to the truth, holiness in truth. Truth. Truth.
Because when we lose sight of the truth, we're hopelessly lost. And truth is not always easy to come by. It takes work. But our lord says, be as smart as the worldly. That's the least you can do for eternity and for god.
In the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit. Amen.