Dom Prosper Guéranger:
Dom Prosper Guéranger:
Dom Prosper Guéranger:
In the Middle Ages, this Sunday was called the sixth and last Sunday after the Natalis of the Apostles, that is, the Feast of Saint Peter. It was indeed the last for the years when Easter had been kept as late in April as was possible. But it was only the first after that Feast of Saint Peter when Easter immediately followed the spring equinox.
We have already noticed the variable character of this last portion of the liturgical cycle which was the result of Easter being kept on a different day each year, and that, in consequence of this variation, this week might be either the second of the reading from the Sapiential Books or, what was of more frequent occurrence, the Books of Kings were still providing the Lessons for the divine Office. In this latter case, it is the ancient Temple raised by Solomon, the King of Peace, to the glory of Jehovah, that engages the Church’s attention today. We will find that the portions of the Mass which are chanted on this Sunday are closely connected with the Lessons read in last night’s Office.
Let us then turn our reverential thoughts once more to this splendid monument of the ancient Covenant. The Church is now going through that month which immediately preceded the events so momentous to Jerusalem. She would do honour today to the glorious and divine past which prepared her own present. Let us, like her, enter into the feelings of the first Christians who were Judah’s own children they had been told of the impending destruction foretold by the Prophets and an order from God bade them depart from Jerusalem. What a solemn moment that was when the little flock of the elect, the only ones in whom was kept up the faith of Abraham and the knowledge of the destinies of the Hebrew people, had just begun their emigration and looked back on the city of their fathers to take a last farewell!
They took the road to the east. It led towards the Jordan beyond which God had provided a refuge for the remnant of Israel (Isaias x. 20-23). They halted on the incline of Mount Olivet from where they had a full view of Jerusalem. In a few moments that hill would be between them and the city. Not quite forty years before, the Man-God had sat Himself down on that same spot (Mark xiii. 1-3), taking His own last look at the city and her Temple. Jerusalem was seen in all her magnificence from this portion of the Mount which afterwards would be visited and venerated by our Christian pilgrims. The city had long since recovered from its ruins and had, at the time we are speaking of, been enlarged by the princes of the Herodian family, so favourably looked on by the Romans. Never in any previous period of her history had Jerusalem been so perfect and so beautiful as she then was when our fugitives were gazing on her. There was not, as yet, the slightest outward indication that she was the city accursed of God.
There, as a queen in her strength and power, she was throned amid the mountains of which the Psalmist had sung (Psalm cxxiv. 2). Her towers (Psalm cxxi. 7) and palaces seemed as though they were her crown. Within the triple enclosure of the walls built by her latest kings, she enchased those three hills, the grandest, not only of Judea, but of the whole world: first there was Sion with her unparalleled memories, then Golgotha that had not yet been honoured with the Holy Sepulchre and which nevertheless was even then attracting to herself the Roman legions who were to wreak vengeance on this guilty land, and lastly Moriah, the sacred mount of the old world on whose summit was raised that unrivalled Temple which gave Jerusalem to be the queen of all the Cities of the East, for as such even the Gentiles acknowledged her (Pliny, Natural History v. 15).
At sunrise when in the distance there appeared the sanctuary towering upwards of a hundred cubits above the two rows of porticoes which formed its double enclosure: when the sun cast his morning rays on that facade of gold and white marble: when there glittered the thousand gilded spires which mounted from its roof — it seemed, says Josephus, that it was a hill capped with snow which gradually shone and reddened with the morning beams. The eye was dazzled, the soul was amazed, religion was roused within the beholder, and even the pagans fell down prostrate. Yes, when the pagan came here, either for conquest or for curiosity, if he ever returned, it was as a pilgrim. Full of holy sentiments, he ascended the hill and, having reached the summit, he entered by the golden gate into the gorgeous galleries which formed the outward enclosure of the Temple. In the Court of the Gentiles he met with men from every country. His soul was struck by the holiness of a place where he felt that there were preserved in all purity the ancient religious traditions of the human race and, he being profane, stood afar off assisting at the celebrations of the Hebrew worship, such as God had commanded it to be, that is, with all the magnificence of a divine ritual. The white column of smoke from the burning victims rose up before him as Earth’s homage to God, its creator and saviour. From the inner courts there fell on his ear the harmony of the sacred chants, carrying as they did to Heaven both the ardent prayer of those ages of expectation and the inspired expression of the world’s hope.
And when, from the midst of the Levite choirs and the countless priests who were busy in their ministry of sacrifice and praise, the High Priest, with his golden crown on his head, came forth holding the censer in his hand and entering himself alone within the mysterious veil which curtained off the Holy of Holies, the stranger, though he had but a glimpse of all those splendid symbols of religion, yet confessed himself overpowered and acknowledged the incomparable greatness of that invisible Deity, whose majesty made all the vain idols of the Gentiles seem to him paltry and foolish pretences. The princes of Asia, and the greatest kings considered it an honour to be permitted to contribute, both by personal gifts of their own making, and by sums taken from the national treasuries, towards defraying the expenses of the holy place (Malachias iii. 2, 3).
The Roman Generals and the Caesars themselves kept up the traditions of Cyrus (1 Esedras vi. 7) and Alexander in this respect. Augustus ordered that every day a bull and two lambs should be presented, in his name, to the Jewish priests, and be immolated on Jehovah’s altar for the well-being of the empire. His successors insisted on the practice being continued, and Josephus tells us that the beginning of the war was attributable to the sacrificers refusing any longer to accept the imperial offerings. But if the majesty of the Temple thus impressed the very pagans right up to its last days, there were reasons for an intensity of veneration and love on the part of a faithful Jew which he alone could realise. He was the inheritor of the submissive faith of the Patriarchs. As such he was well aware that the prophetic privileges of his fatherland were but an announcement to the whole world that it was one day to be blessed with the more real and lasting benefits of which he, the Jew, possessed but a figure. He quite understood that the hour had come when the children of God would not confine their worship within the narrow limits of one mountain or one city (John iv. 21, 23). He knew that God’s true temple was then actually being built up on every hill of the Gentile world (Isaias ii. 2), and that in its immensity it took in all those countries of the Earth into which the Blood that flowed first from Calvary had won its way. And yet, we can easily understand what a sharp pang of anguish thrilled through his patriot heart now that God was about to consummate, before the astonished universe, the terrible consumption (Isaias x. 23) of the ungrateful people whom he had chosen for his portion his inheritance (Deuteronomy xxxii. 9). Who is there that would not share in the grief of these holy ones of Jacob, few in number as the ears of corn gathered by the gleaner (Isaias xvii. 5) and now bidding an eternal farewell to that holy, but now accursed, city? These true Israelites might well weep. They were leaving forever, leaving to devastation and ruin, their homes, their country and, dearest of all, that Temple which for ages had sanctified the glory of Israel, and gave Judah the right and title to be the noblest of the nations of the Earth (Deuteronomy iv. 6-8).
There was something even beyond all this: it was that their dear Jerusalem had been the scene of the grandest mysteries of the law of grace. Was it not in yonder Temple that, as the Prophets expressed it, God had manifested the Angel of the Testament (Malachias ii. 1) and given peace? The honour of that Temple is no longer the exclusive right of an isolated people, for the Desired of all nations (Aggeus ii.1), by His going into it, has brought it a grander glory than all the ages of expectation and prophecy have imparted (Aggeus ii. 8, 10). It was under the shadow of those walls that Mary — she that was to be the future Seat of Wisdom Eternal — prepared within her soul and body a more august sanctuary for the divine Word, than was that, whose cedared and golden wainscoting made it so exquisite a shelter for the infant maiden. Yes, it was there that, when but three years old, Mary joyously mounted up the fifteen steps which separated the Court of women from the Eastern Gate, offering to God the pure homage of her immaculate heart. Here, then, on the summit of Moriah began, in the person of their Queen, the long line of consecrated virgins who, to the end of time, will come offering after Her their love to the King (Psalm xliv. 15, 16). There, also, the new Priesthood found its type and model in the divine Mother’s presenting, in that holy Temple, the world’s Victim Jesus, the new-born child of her chaste womb. In that same dwelling made by the hands of men, in those halls where sat the Doctors, Eternal Wisdom too seated Himself under the form of a child of twelve, instructing the very Teachers of the Law by His sublime questions and divine answers (Luke ii. 46, 47). Every one of those Courts had seen the Word Incarnate giving forth treasures of goodness, power and heavenly doctrine. One of those porticoes was the favourite one where Jesus used to walk (John x. 23) and the infant Church made it the place of its early assemblies (Acts iii. 11; v. 12).
Truly then, this Temple is holy with a holiness possessed by no other spot on Earth. It is holy for the Jew of Sinai. It is holy for the Christian, be he Jew or Gentile, for here he finds that the Law ends, because here are verified all its figures (Romans x. 4). With good reason did our Mother the Church in her Office for this night repeat the words which were spoken by God to Solomon: “I have sanctified this House which you have built, to put my name there forever, and my eyes and my heart will be always there” (3 Kings ix. 3). How then is it that dark forebodings are come terrifying the watchmen of the Holy Mount? Strange apparitions, fearful noises, have deprived the sacred edifice of that calm and peace which become the House of the Lord. At the feast of Pentecost, the priests who were fulfilling their ministry have heard in the Holy place a commotion like that of a mighty multitude, and many voices crying out together: “Let us go hence!” On another occasion, at midnight, the heavy brazen gate which closed the sanctuary on the eastern side, and which took twenty men to move it, has opened of itself. Temple, Temple, let us say it, with them that witnessed these threatening prodigies, why are you thus troubled? Why do you work your own destruction? Alas, we know what awaits you! The Prophet Zacharias foretold it when he said: “Open your gates, Libanus, and let fire devour your cedars! (Zacharias xi. 1).
God — has He forgotten His promises of infinite goodness? No. But let us think on the terrible and just warning which He added to the promise He made to Solomon when he had finished building the Temple: “But if you and your children, revolting will turn away from following me, and will not keep my commandments and my ceremonies which I have set before you, I will take away Israel from the face of the land, which I have given them; and the Temple which I have sanctified to my name, I will cast out of my sight; and Israel will be a proverb, and a by-word among all people. And this house will be made an example of. Every one that will pass by it will be astonished, and will hiss and say, ‘Why has the Lord done thus to this land, and to this house?’”
O Christian soul! You that by the grace of God have become a temple (1 Corinthians iii. 16, 17) more magnificent, more beloved in His eyes, than that of Jerusalem, take a lesson from these divine chastisements and reflect on the words of the Most High as recorded by Ezechiel: “The Justice of the just will not deliver him, in whatever day he will sin... Yes, if I will say to the just that he will surely live, and he, trusting in his justice, commits iniquity, all his justices will be forgotten, and in his iniquity, which he has committed, in the same will he die” (Ezechiel xxxiii. 12, 13).
With the Greeks, the multiplication of the five loaves and two fishes is the subject of the Gospel for this Sunday: they count it the eighth of Saint Matthew.Epistle – Romans xii. 12‒17
Brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh to live according to the flesh; for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the spirit you mortify the deeds of the flesh, you will live. For whoever are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. You have not received the spirit of bondage again in fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption of sons by which we cry, “Abba” (Father). For the Spirit Himself gives testimony to our spirit, that we are the sons of God; and if sons, heirs also; heirs indeed of God, and joint heirs with Christ.Thanks be to God.
Dom Prosper Guéranger:
The Apostle and Doctor of the Gentiles here goes on forming to the Christian life the new recruits whom his own voice and that of his fellow apostles, dispersed as they are throughout the world, are every day leading, by hundreds, to the fount of salvation. Although the Church is all attention to the events which are preparing for Judea, yet is she full of maternal solicitude for the great work of the training those children whom she has given to her divine Spouse. While Israel is obstinate in his fatal refusal to accept the Messiah, another family is growing up in his place. And, by its docility, richly repays our Lord for all the rebellion and slights offered him by the children He had first made His chosen ones. They were the ancient people, and are jealous of others being now called to the same privilege. The contradictions of which Christ complains in the Psalm (Psalm xvii. 44-46) are anything but over and yet, thanks to the Church, the Man-God is already the Head of the Gentiles.
Admirable is the fruitfulness of the Bride: for wonderful is the power of sanctification which she is using all through the world of various nations. Scarcely has she sprung into her beauteous existence than she offers to her Lord and her King a new empire consolidated in unity of love. She presents Him with a generation that is all pure in the intelligence and practice of every virtue. It is quite true that the Holy Ghost acts directly on the souls of the newly baptised, but there is a something else to be considered in the divine plan. It is this: the Word having been made flesh, and having taken to Himself a Bride (which is the visible Church on Earth) whom He has made His associate in the work of man’s salvation, He has willed that the invisible operation of the divine Spirit who proceeds from Him (the Word) will not be in its normal state unless there be added to it the extrinsic co-operation and intervention of this His Bride. Not only is the Church the depository of those all-potent formulas and mysterious rites which change man’s heart into a new soil, cleansing it from thorns and weeds, making it able to produce a hundred-fold, but she also sows the seed of the divine husbandman into that same soil (Luke viii. 11) by her countless modes of teaching the Truth. To the Holy Ghost, indeed, a magnificent share is due of that fecundity and that social life of the Church. Still, her portion of work is exquisite. It deals with the elect taken as individuals, and consists especially in getting them to profit of the divine energies of the Sacraments which she administers, and in developing the germs of salvation which her teaching plants in their souls.
How important, then, and sublime will ever be that mission which is confided to those men who are set over particular churches, as teachers or directors of souls. They represent, to these isolated congregations, the common Mother of all the Faithful, for, in her name, they really provide for the Holy Spirit those elements upon whom He is to make His all-powerful action felt. For that very same reason, woe to those times when the dispensers of the divine word, having themselves nought but halved or false principles, give but weak shrivelled seed to the souls entrusted to them! The Holy Ghost is not bound to supply their insufficiency. Ordinarily speaking, He will not supply it, for such is not the way established by Christ for the sanctification of the members of His Church.
The common Mother, however, has a supplementary aid for such of her children as may be thus treated — it is her Liturgy. There they will find, not only the holy Sacrifice which will support them and the graces of the Sacrament of love which will nourish spiritual life within them — but, moreover, the surest rule of conduct, and the sublimest teachings of every virtue. Such souls as these have perhaps got the idea that the poor subjective system they have made for themselves is the royal road to perfection. But if they be of an earnest good will, desirous to find the best way, God will some happy day lead them to find, and, finding, to appreciate the inexhaustible and divinely given treasures of the Church’s Liturgy. Possessing and enriching themselves with these, they will soon put aside what the Prophet Isaias terms, bread without strength, and water without power (Isaias iii. 1; xxx. 20). The same Prophet would thus urge them in the Church’s name to what is best: “All you that thirst, come to the waters! And you that have no money, make haste, buy and eat. Come! Buy wine and milk, without money, and without any price. Why do you spend money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which cloth not satisfy you? Hearken diligently to me, and eat that which is good, and your soul will be delighted in fatness!” (Isaias iv. 1, 2).
And truly there is a fact which should rouse, both to attention and gratitude, any Christian who longs to be enlightened as to the best way of getting to Heaven: this fact is that the Church herself has made a selection, for our reading, from the treasury of the Scriptures and in her Missal, which she puts into our hands, she has inserted practical teachings from the same divine Books which she knew were best suited to the wants of her children. A Christian who is humbly and devoutly assiduous in the study of this admirable book of the Liturgy, will abound in spiritual knowledge. His guide will say to him, and with a well-grounded assurance: “This is the way! Walk in it! And go not aside, neither to the right, nor to the left” (Isaias xxx. 20). We have no need to wonder at all this, for in the guidance of souls the Church is far superior to the most learned Doctors and to the greatest Saints, all of whom were humble disciples in her school.
Let us put together the few lines which have been read to us as the Epistles of the last three Sundays, and were taken from that written by Saint Paul to the Romans: and, to say nothing of their infallible truth as being inspired by the Holy Ghost, could we have had any exposition of the principles of revealed morality which could have been compared to it? Clearness, simplicity of diction, earnest vehemence of exhortation — all are perfect in these few words, and yet they are but the outward expression of the sublimest truths of Christian dogma. Let us make the barest possible summary of what these three Epistles have taught us, and we will see how grand they are. Christ Jesus, foundation of man’s salvation; His death and burial made, in Baptism, the regeneration of man; His Life in God, the model of our own; the disgrace of our enslaved bodies, removed; the sanctifying fruitfulness of every virtue substituted in our members for the poisonous roots of all vices; and, on this very Sunday, the pre-eminence of the spirit over the flesh; the duties incumbent on our spirit, if she is to maintain her superiority; what man must do, if he would preserve the liberty bestowed on him by the Spirit of love, and prove himself to be, what he really is, a son of God and joint-heir of Christ. Yes, these are the splendid realities which are henceforth to light up in us the law of the spirit of life (that is, the law of the life we are to live by the Spirit) in Christ Jesus (Romans viii. 2). These are the axioms of the science of salvation now taught to the whole world, which are to be substituted for both the weaknesses of the Jewish law and the empty ethics of philosophers.
For, the leading idea which pervades the whole of this sublime Epistle to the Romans is this: man, unaided by grace, is incapable of producing perfect justice and absolute good. Experience has proved it, Saint Paul teaches it, the Fathers will, later on, unanimously assert it, and the Church, in her Councils, will define it. True, by the mere powers of his fallen nature, man may come to the knowledge of some truths and to the practise of some virtues. But without grace he can never know, and still less observe, the precepts of even the natural law, if you take them as a whole. From Jesus, then, from Jesus, alone comes all justice. Not only supernatural justice, which supposes the infusion of sanctifying grace in the sinner’s soul, is wholly from Him. But even that natural justice, of which men are so proud and which they say is quite enough without anything else —even that soon leaves one who does not cling to Christ by faith and love. Our modern world has a pompous phrase about “the independence of the human mind.” Let them who pretend to acknowledge no other goodness but that, go on with their boasting of being moral and honest men. But, as to us Christians, we believe what our mother the Church teaches us. And agreeably to such teaching, we believe, that “a moral and honest man,” that is to say, a man who lives up to all the duties which nature puts on him, can only be that here below by a special aid of our Redeemer and Saviour, Christ Jesus. With Saint Paul, therefore, let us be proud of the Gospel (Romans i. 16) for, as he calls it, it is the power of God, not only to justify the ungodly (Romans iv. 5), but also to enrich souls that thirst after what is right with an active and perfect justice. The just man, says the same Apostle, lives by faith, and according to the growth of his faith, so is his growth in justice (Romans i. 17) Without faith in Christ, the pretension to reach perfection in good, by one’s own self and works, produces nothing but the stagnation of pride and the wrath of God (Romans i. 18). The Jews are a proof of it. Proud of their Law which gave them light greater than that enjoyed by the Gentiles (Romans ii. 17-20), and wishing to make their whole virtue consist in their having possession of that Law, they have rejected Him who was the end of the Law and the source of all holiness (Romans x. 3, 4). They have refused to accept the Christ who not only delivered them from their previous misery (Romans iii. 25) but also brought them the knowledge of what would save them, and the strength to fulfil it (Romans viii. 3, 4). They have continued in their iniquity, adding sin upon sin to that contracted from their First Parents, and thus treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath (Romans ii. 5). Now is being fulfilled the prediction of Isaias, whose words might very appropriately have been used by the faithful few of Israel, whom we have been today looking at when they were fleeing from Jerusalem: “Except the Lord of hosts had left us seed, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like Gomorrhah” (Isaias i. 9).
What, then, shall we say? asks the Apostle (Romans ix. 30-33). And he answers his own question thus: “That the Gentiles, who followed not after justice, have attained to justice, that is, the justice that comes from faith. But Israel, by following after the law of justice, is not come to the law of justice. Why so? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were of works: for they stumbled at the stumbling-stone, as it is written: ‘Behold! I lay in Sion a stumbling-stone and a rock of scandal; and whoever believes in Him, will not be confounded’” (Isaias viii. 14; xxviii. 16).Gospel – Luke xvi. 1‒9
At that time Jesus spoke to His disciples this parable: “There was a certain rich man who had a steward, and the same was accused to him that he had wasted his goods. And he called him and said to him: ‘How is it that I hear this of you? Give an account of your stewardship: for now you can be steward no longer.’ And the steward said to himself: ‘What am I to do, because my lord takes 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 am removed from the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses.’ Therefore, calling together every one of his lord’s debtors, he said to the first: ‘How much do you owe my lord?’ But he said: ‘An hundred barrels of oil.’ And he said to him: ‘Take your bill and sit down quickly and write fifty.’ Then he said to another: ‘And how much do you owe?’ Who said: ‘A hundred quarters of wheat.’ He said to him: ‘Take your bill and write eighty.’ And the lord commended the unjust steward, for as much as he had done wisely: for the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light. And I say to you: Make friends of the mammon of iniquity, that when you will fail, they may receive you into everlasting dwellings.”Praise be to you, O Christ.
Dom Prosper Guéranger:
The several parts of the parable here proposed to us are easy to be understood, and convey a deep teaching. God alone is rich by nature, for to Him alone belongs the direct and absolute dominion over all things: they are his, because He made them (Psalms xxiii.2; lxxxviii). But, by sending His Son into the world under a created form, He, by this temporal mission, appointed him Heir to all the works of His hands (Psalm viii. 6-8) just as truly as He already was owner of the riches of the divine nature because of His eternal generation. The rich man, then, of our Gospel is Jesus who in His sacred Humanity, united to the Word, is heir of all things (Hebrews i. 2; ii. 8) and as such all things of the Most High God, created or uncreated, finite or infinite, belong to Him. To Him belong the heavens which proclaim his glory (Psalm xviii. 2, 6) and which, as long as they last (Psalm ci. 27) clothe Him with their garment of light (Psalm ciii. 2). To Him the ocean, whose surges are but a voice that speaks His praise (Psalm cxii. 2) and hushes the fury of its tempests when He bids it be still (Mark iv. 39, 40), to Him the Earth, which gladly offers Him the homage of all its fullness (Psalm xxiii. 1), the grass and flowers of the meadows, the varied fruits, the fertile loveliness of the fields (Psalm xlix. 11), the birds of the air and the fishes which inhabit the rivers, or that sport in the paths of the sea (Psalm viii. 9) the huge oxen as well as the tiniest insect that lives —the wild beasts of forest or mountain (Psalm xlix. 9, 10), all are His, all are subject to His rule. Silver, too, is His, and gold is His (Aggeus ii. 9) and man too is His, and would have been eternally His servant had not this Jesus mercifully vouchsafed to divinise him, and make him a partaker of His own eternal happiness and riches.
Instead of our being His slaves or servants, He would have us be his Brothers. And when He returned from this world to His Father, whom He had also made to be ours by the grace He had infused into us (John xx. 17), He sent us the Holy Ghost who should bear testimony to us that we are the Sons of God (Romans viii. 16) and be to us the pledge of our sacred inheritance — Heaven (Ephesian i. 14). Ineffable riches of the world to come! Inheritance the fullest that ever was! Our Jesus Himself is all joy at the sight of it and, in the Psalm of His Resurrection, He gives expression to that joy. We, His members and joint-heirs, have a right to repeat those words after Him and say: “The lines are fallen to me in goodly places; for my inheritance is goodly to me! for the Lord Himself is my portion! I will bless Him for His having given me to understand my happiness!” (Psalm xv. 5-7).
But, in order that we may attain to those eternal riches, there is a condition imposed on us: we must turn to profit the visible domain of Christ. We must see that it is used in His service. The future rewards we are to have in Heaven depend on the more or less fidelity with which we have employed our share of these inferior good things, for they are entrusted to us, to each of us in the measure which seemed good in God’s eyes. What a divine agreement has been drawn up for us! What perfect adjustment between justice and love! Our Lord Jesus Christ has divided His property into two portions. He gives the eternal portion unreservedly to us. It is the only one that is truly great, the only one that is capable of contenting our infinite longings. As to the other portion which, in itself, would not be worthy of the attention of beings that are made for the contemplation of the divine essence, He could not think of allowing us to set our hearts on it, neither will He permit us to have absolute dominion over it. The real possession of temporal goods belongs, therefore, to Him alone. The ownership of earthly riches, which He permits to the future joint-heirs of His own blissful eternity, is subject to numberless restrictions during their lifetime and, at their death, exhibits its essentially precarious tenure by its not being able to follow its owner beyond the grave.
For the fool, as well as for the wise man, the day will come when his soul will be required of him (Luke xii. 20) and when the rich man, as well as the poor, will be brought before his Maker, exactly as he was on the day of his first entrance into the world (Job i. 21), and it will be said to him: “Give an account of your stewardship!” At that dread hour the rule observed for the judgement will be that which our Lord revealed to us during His mortal life: “To whoever much is given, of him much will be required; and to whom they have committed much, of him they will demand the more” (Luke xii. 48). Woe, at that hour, to the servant who has comported himself as though he were the absolute master! Woe to the steward who, disregarding the trust assigned to him, has done just what his own whim suggested with the goods of which he was only the dispenser! (Luke xii. 42). When that the light of eternity will be on him, he will understand the error of his foolish pride. He will see the shameful injustice of a life which the world, perhaps, thought a very decent one, but which was spent without the slightest regard to the intentions for which God gave him the riches, which were his boast. He will then be entirely deprived of them all. Neither will it be then in his power to make a better use of them for the future, that is, a use more in accordance with the designs of God. If he might, at least, make some restitution for the goods he has abused! If he might sue for aid from those with whom he lived on Earth! But, no, when time is over, labour is over too. He has nothing to show for all his riches. He is powerless and when he goes before that dread tribunal where every man is afraid that he cannot put his own accounts right, whom can he get to help him? (Matthew xxv. 9).
Happy, therefore, if now that time is still granted him, he would allow the thousand calls of God (Psalm xciv. 8) to awaken him from his false conscience! Happy, if, like the steward mentioned in our Gospel, he would profit of the days he has still to live, and would say to himself those words of Job: “What will I do, when God will rise to judge? (Job xxxi. 14). And, when He will examine, what will I answer Him? (Luke xii. 42). This very Judge whom he so rightly fears now most mercifully points out to him how he may escape the punishment due to his past maladministration. Let him imitate the prudence of the unjust steward, and he will have praise for it from his Lord: not only, like him, because of his prudence, but because, by his thus spending over God’s servants the riches that were entrusted to his care, far from thereby robbing his divine Master, he acts in strict accordance with His wishes. “Who think you,” asks our Lord, “is the faithful and wise steward, whom his Lord sets over his family, to give them, in due time, their measure of wheat and oil? (Esdras v. 11) Alms, whether corporal or spiritual, secure us powerful friends for that awful day of our death and judgement. It is to the poor that the kingdom of heaven belongs (Matthew v. 3) so that, if we spend the riches of this present life in solacing the sufferings of those poor ones now that they are living here below, afterwards, they will not fail to make us a return by receiving us into their future homes, the everlasting dwellings of Heaven.
Such is the immediate and obvious meaning of the parable given to us today. But if we would go further, if we would understand the whole intention of the Church in her choice of the present Gospel, we must listen to Saint Jerome whose homily for last night’s Office is put before us as the official interpretation of the sacred text. Let us first listen to the words of Scripture which the Saint quotes, they immediately follow those of our Gospel: “He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in that which is greater; and he that is unjust in that which is little, is unjust also in that which is greater. If, then, you have not been faithful in the unjust mammon, who will trust you with that which is the true?” (Luke xvi. 10-14). These words, says Saint Jerome, were said in the presence of the Scribes and Pharisees. They felt that the parable was intended for them, and they derided the divine preacher. The one that was unjust in that which is little, is the jealous Jew, who, in the limited possession of the present life, refuses to his fellow-men the use of those goods which were created for all. If, then, you avaricious Scribes are convicted of maladministration in the management of temporal riches, how can you expect to have confided to you the true, the eternal, riches of the divine word, and the teaching of the Gentiles? Terrible question, which our Lord leaves thus unanswered. Let these unjust Stewards, the depositories of the figurative Law, deride Jesus as much as they please and pretend that His question does not refer to them. But they will soon be giving the true answer: the answer will be the ruin of Jerusalem.
