Homily for November 7. 2025, -- Friday of the 31st week.
Luke 16:1-8
Homily
In this Gospel, which is certainly not easy to interpret, Jesus is probably alluding to a case of cheating that had occurred shortly before and was undoubtedly well known to His audience. It may have been a story that was repeated and made people laugh. Jesus certainly does not intend to teach us how to cheat our employer or the government with this story!
An interesting detail to note is that Luke is the only evangelist who reported this story, and we know how concerned Luke is with everything related to poverty and the danger of riches and money. In fact, the sentence that sums up the whole story is the last one (we will have it in tomorrow's Gospel): ‘You cannot serve God and Mammon.’ Luke gives money a proper name, ‘Mammon,’ to show that if we become slaves to money, it becomes our master and dominates us as a human master would.
Jesus' teaching in this story is therefore as follows: If the children of this world, who are themselves slaves to material things, are so shrewd... how much more skilful should you be, you who claim to be children of God. You should use money, not to build security for a temporal and worldly future, but to build an eternal kingdom, both for yourselves and for your fellow human beings. And the way to do this is to consider that you are not the owners of what you possess. You are its custodians, and you must use it according to the needs of all, not just your own personal needs.
We know that there is great greed in each of our hearts, and we know that there is a great deal of greed and deceit in the world, in individual relationships as well as between nations or blocs of nations. And we know that this is the source of all tensions between people and all wars between nations.
Let us each make our choice once again for God rather than for Mammon or anything else, and let us ask God to enlighten the eyes and guide the actions of those who hold in their hands the lives and destinies of millions of people in need.
Armand Veilleux