25th Sunday in Ordinary Time
When it comes to money, wealth, taxes and honesty The Gospels seem to be full of contradictions!
Jesus seems to commend the dishonest steward in today’s parable. But as we read on we see that it is the steward’s prudence that is more important than the mere money matters. Elsewhere Jesus tells us that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to get into heaven. Yet we notice that Jesus has rich friends, like Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, and that He is often invited by the elders to meals and banquets.
Jesus constantly refers to the tax-collectors as sinners, yet tells Peter to render the taxes that are due to Caesar. If we do get rid of all we possess, how will we have anything to give to the poor?
We celebrate the Feast of St Matthew the Apostle on Wednesday (21st). Matthew, more than any of the other Apostles is associated with money. Matthew, according to Jesus, was one of the sinners, because he was a tax-collector. Tax-collectors were despised by the people and regarded as sinners, like prostitutes. He had come from a higher stratus of society than the ordinary people and he collaborated with an alien and greedy authority whose taxes were unfairly determined.
I think that the way that Mathew responded to the call of Jesus illustrates as well as any parable what Jesus wants us to understand about money, riches and wealth.
“As Jesus passed on from there, He saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax office; and He said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he rose and followed Him.” Matthew’s response could not be more definite, determined and immediate. He would leave all behind and rely entirely on the One whom he would follow. (Caravaggio’s ‘Call of Matthew’ in St Louis of France in Rome)
While Matthew dealt in money, and perhaps had much money, it was not his life, he did not put all his trust in it. On the list of the seven ‘capital sins’ covetousness is second only to pride. Covetousness is the compulsive desire to possess more. Compulsion does not know the meaning of enough and that is why Jesus said the money can make a slave of the possessor.
For believers and the disciples of Jesus the way to remain grounded in our use of money or any material goods is to bear in mind that everything comes from God and really there is nothing that we can rightly claim as private property.
The mistake of sin is to settle for the gift and neglect the Giver. The secret of the saint is in knowing how to use the gifts as a way back to the Giver. Nobody has described it better than St Augustine. ‘Late have I loved you, O beauty ever ancient, ever new…. I sought you outside and in my ugliness fell upon those lovely things that you had made. You were with me and I was not with you, and I was kept from those things; yet had they not been with you, they would not have been at all.’(Confessions, Book 10)
The early Christian communities held everything in common and expressed their generosity and sharing in their coming together to celebrate Eucharist. Our sharing in the Eucharist is a sign of our desire to share our greatest gift with each other.