Ordo Praedicatorum

Below is the text of the Homily by Fr. James Cuddy, O.P. for the 25th Sunday of Ordinary Time

“All over the Gospels and in the parables, our Lord gives us examples and stories filled with people worthy of imitation: fishermen and tax collectors who got up and followed him; the sick and centurions who have great confidence in his power to heal and to save; a sister who serves and a sister who sits at his feet listening to him speak. He praises them all, and rightly so.

But today that praise is given to a dishonest steward. Having squandered his Master’s property, he seems to compound his offence by fixing the books. The praise seems even stranger when we consider it in light of the parable of the talents in Matthew’s Gospel. There the bad steward returns to the Master the one talent that he had been given. He didn’t squander it as today’s steward did; he just didn’t make it grow. For this, the Master calls him wicked and casts him into the outer darkness where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. He is cut off from the life and the love of the Master. But today’s steward is different. He gets commended and his life is even offered to us as an example. At first glance it’s troublesome and enough to make you want to preach on the second reading.

The praise looks like its misplaced, but look carefully at the story. The steward is in a bad way. He knows he’s about to get fired and needs to do something fast. This moment of crisis forces him to come up with a plan and put it into action to avoid disaster and provide for his future. And look at the brilliance of his plan! He knows that the debtors will be bound by the societal code of honor to receive him into their houses and treat him well if he cuts them a break. But there’s more than that. Look at the urgency that he shows. He says to the first debtor, “How much do you owe? Quickly, write yourself a new note.” Quickly. Do it now. See, the debtors don’t know that he’s about to get the ax. By immediately putting his plan into action, the dishonest steward is able to make it seem like the debt relief is done on behalf of the Master. So not only does he put the debtors in the position of having to show him hospitality, but he also puts the Master in a position of not being able to rescind the generosity. After all, he’d look like a greedy jerk if he tore up the new promissory notes. Brilliant, right? He’s pulled one over on the rich man and secured his own future. You can almost see the master smirking as he commends him and says, “Nice move, kid. Good one.”

So then here’s the key to the parable. Our Lord says: The children of this world are more prudent in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. The children of the world are the ones who are consumed by the desire to own, to possess, to get more and to horde more. They are those whose foresight goes no further than the present world, those who give to thought to eternity. They are entirely single-minded. They know what they want and will do whatever it takes to get it.

The best example of this comes from one of my classmates. He has an uncle who is a very successful businessman and has made a sizable fortune in his career. This man is so single-minded, aggressive, and intense that I don’t even know his real name. I only know him by his nickname: The Rat. My favorite story of the Rat’s single-mindedness is one time when one of the other executives in the office had brought the famous Mickey Mantle into the office. Now the Rat was working in New York and you’d think that he’d have been thrilled to meet the Mick. Not so much. His co-worker brought Mickey over to the Rat’s desk where he was yelling at someone on the phone. Looking up and seeing the great Mickey Mantle standing at his desk, he covered the mouthpiece on the phone and said in a low voice, “Hey, how are ya?” before giving his full attention back to the victim on the other end of the phone. His coworker stood there in disbelief. “Excuse me, Rat . . . this is Mickey Mantle.” Well this was enough to make the Rat stop. He put the phone down and stood up. Then he took from his pocket the large wad of cash that he always has on hand and riffled through the bills with some dramatic flourish. He sneered at his coworker and said in a voice loud enough for the whole office to hear, “Do you see Mickey Mantle’s picture on any of these bills? No? Then get back to work!”

So there’s a real child of the world. But the children of the light are those who have heard the Word of God and know that there is more to this life than the present age. As St. John and St. Paul tell us, they’re the ones who live their lives in the sure hope of salvation in Christ. In the Lord’s words, though, you can kind of hear a lament: The children of this age are shrewd and focused on the things of this world. Why do the children of light not strive for the things of God with such single-minded zeal?

The Lord, of course, is not calling us to be thieves and cheats. These things would take us further and further from the Kingdom. He rather invites us to be clever, sharp-witted, wise and savvy in the living out of our Christian vocation. In short, he’s calling us to be prudent. Now there’s worldly prudence, which is exemplified by the Rat, and Christian prudence, which shines forth so beautifully in the lives of the saints. Both look forward to future goods to be attained, figure out how those goals are best reached, and act accordingly. The difference, as St. Vincent de Paul says, is that “human, worldly prudence only has worldly prosperity in view. Christian prudence takes eternal Incarnate Wisdom for its guide. It is regulated by the maxims of our faith.”

It is prudence that guides love: our love of God and the love that we must have for our neighbors. St. Pio says: “You must always have both prudence and love. Prudence has the eyes and love has the legs! Love, which has the legs, wants to run to God and others, but its impulse to rush is blind and at times it can stumble. So it must be guided by prudence, which has the eyes.”

Cultivating the spiritual life and striving for the things of God are hard to do. They’re difficult because the goals that we seek are unseen. The things of this world and the things of the flesh are so much more accessible and present to us all day, every day. That’s why we need the eyes of prudence to guide and direct our love to its proper object, each day in very practical, savvy, and shrewd ways. The goal of our lives here on earth is to live in such a way that one day, when we stand before our Lord in judgment, he’ll smile and say, “Nice move, kid. Good job.” And that’s just another way of saying: Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your Lord.

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