Liturgy: The Eighth Sunday After Pentecost

"What shall I do because my Lord taketh away from me the stewardship? To dig I am not able, to beg I am ashamed. I know what I will do, that when I shall be removed from the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses” (Magnificat antiphon).

At Pentecost the Church received the outpouring of the Holy Ghost and today's liturgy shows us its happy results. This blessed Spirit makes us children of God since we are led by Him to say in simple truth: Our Father. Therefore we are assured of our heavenly inheritance (Epistle). But to obtain this assurance we must live for God, in living by Him (Collect), letting ourselves be led in all things by the Spirit of God (Epistle), so shall we one day be welcomed by God into everlasting dwellings (Gospel).

The Gospel tells us, in the form of a parable, how we can use the "mammon of iniquity" to make sure of our entry into everlasting dwellings. An unjust steward, charged with having wasted his master's goods, makes friends for himself with the help of the goods the latter had entrusted to his care, so that after his disgrace there might be those who would receive him into their houses.

Thus, teaches Our Lord, should the children of light rival the energy of the children of the world, and copying the foresight of this functionary, make use of the goods placed at their disposal by almighty God to help the needy, thus making for themselves friends in heaven. For those who have borne their privations on earth in a Christian spirit will pass to the world above and will there bear witness to their benefactors at the time when all will have to give account of their stewardship to the divine Judge.

Source: Dom Gaspar Lefebvre, OSB, 1945, adapted and abridged.