Do you have a home? Do you have a car? What do you call “yours”? All that we possess can become an obstacle to the reality of who I am. The most difficult parable of our Lord Jesus is this parable of the “Unjust Steward”. This individual had the master’s trust and failed to live up to his responsibility. What is that responsibility and how do we judge ourselves in relation to this unjust steward? As you can read there is much that has to be “unpacked” concerning this parable to open the great truth it teaches. So let’s begin with the Steward and consider: “Who is he? and what does he teach?
In the very beginning God formed the spirits that we now call angels and He tested them in their obedience to His Law of Love. Now angels are not like men who are born and develop through stages. Instead angels are given gifts of intelligence and love which enhance the spiritual nature of their being. They are given leaders among them who have been given even greater talents. Take the name Lucifer which means the Bearer of Light. He was supposed to generously share his gifts of light with those below him. If he kept the order of creation in proper perspective then he would be great among the angels. He failed and sought to grasp at equality with God and so was cast down to earth where he continues to replace God’s order with disorder. He is the unjust steward.
In his brilliance Lucifer sought to deceive the humblest of God’s creation and make each of them turn from obedience to the Law of Love. We are all “debtors” to the one and only God. As the angels were tested so now God uses the person of Lucifer to test us in ways that seek to turn our talents to ourselves. In other words Lucifer deceives us with the thought that what we have is ours. Much like the experiment of U.C. Berkeley which sought to discover how personalities develop so they created two rooms ten by ten and in the first room placed a little boy with about thirty different toys. In the second room they placed another boy with a single ball. For thirty minutes they observed the two boys.
In the first room the boy spent about 2 minutes with each of the toys while in the second room the boy played with the ball in a variety of ways. After the first thirty minutes they introduced a second boy to visit. Upon entering the first room filled with toys, the new boy reached for a train and the other boy responded “That’s my train.” He did not want to share anything because they were all “his”. In the second room, the new boy entered and the first boy came up to him and asked: “Do you want to play catch?” The class observation recorded that many things create a selfish and possessive person while one little ball can focus the person and lead that person to share with others.
Now Satan comes up to us and teaches us how to possess many things and to think that these things belong to me and must be held tightly. When we discover that we grow to the extent that we give back to God that which He has given to us. Then we say that a personality has been born. We all receive a hundred wheat bundles translated it means we have all been given the faith. To write 50 means that we have compromised with the faith and fallen into heresy or apostasy. Consider the other compromise in which the unjust steward tells the debtor to write down 80 containers of oil. Oil is the good that you and I are asked to perform in our life.
All debtors must come to realize that compromising short changes the debt we owe for our salvation. We know not how the deceitful Lucifer will seek to build our egos but we know that he likes to make us think we are important because of what we possess. In point of fact we are important to God to the extent that we are dis-possessed. As our Lady teaches us that the humble shall be exalted and the proud cast down so we must learn to humble ourselves and take no credit for any talent or material good that God has granted to us.
Now the parable comes to its apex for God commends the devil for testing us and exposing us to ourselves. We surely are debtors and we must surely never compromise on the truths of our faith nor on the good that God wishes us to perform while we have a physical life in this world of ours. May we turn to Mary and yield all that we are and have to her to be distributed to those in need. Let’s work for the kingdom of God and if we are truly humble then the kingdom of heaven will receive us.
In the hearts of Jesus, Mary and Joseph,
Fr. Richard Voigt
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