Saturday on the Thirty-first Week in Ordinary Time, Cycle I
Rom 16 3-27; Lk 16, 9-15
We all want to find adequate places where to live, especially - or at least - a place to stay for the night. How much more do we long for a good place where to stay after this life! How true do the words of today's gospel ring: make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth, so that when it fails you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings. Don't we all want to be welcomed into eternal dwellings? But what does Jesus mean with, Make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth?
The key to unearthing the richness of this statement is found a few lines further down where Jesus mentions true wealth as opposed to dishonest wealth. True wealth is spiritual wealth, the gifts that God gives us freely. Let us mention a few: forgiveness of sins, spiritual consolation, inner peace, His own Word, His Body and Blood.
Dishonest wealth is therefore worldly wealth, which is important as well and without which we cannot really live. This includes not only material wealth, such as money, but also other types of wealth, such as popularity and power, intelligence. Now Jesus is telling us today to use this worldly wealth, whatever it may be, wisely. Sometimes we might think that giving importance to spiritual wealth, or "true wealth" as Jesus calls it means that we must despise worldly wealth, and we end up misusing it, either hoarding it or wasting it.
In other words, Jesus is inviting us to use our worldly wealth for the benefit of our eternal wealth. Are you a person of with particular influence or power? Do not relinquish it, rather, use it in such a way that you and those on whom you have influence, will benefit spiritually from it.
The only way we can do this is by cultivating a spirit of detachment, that is of knowing how to manage well our worldly riches without being possessed by them. The Saint whom we are commemorating today, Martin of Tours can teach us this as well. We all know the story of how while riding on his horse on one freezing day, he met a beggar and gave him his cloak, and how that night he Christ himself appeared to him wearing the same cloak. It was in fact the event which encourage him to convert and to be baptised by Saint Hilary.
The first grace that Ignatius of Loyola asks us to pray for in the Spiritual Exercises is a spirit of indifference, that is, a spirit of detachment. Many times we do have a spirit of indifference for spiritual wealth and a spirit of grave concern for worldly wealth. But what we really need to pray for is a spirit of indifference for worldly wealth, and a spirit of deep concern for spiritual wealth.
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