September 21, 2025/21 de septiembre de 2025

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25th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C) - The Lesson of the Dishonest Steward

The parable of the dishonest steward is a parable of judgment. He is facing a judgment - an accounting of his stewardship. The Lord tells this parable to get us to reflect on how we are preparing for our judgment - the account we will have to render to God at the end of our lives. A steward is someone who has been entrusted with the master’s goods and has been tasked to manage his property while he is away or to be his representative in the affairs of the world. We are all stewards of God’s gifts; as Christians we are “other Christs” and represent Jesus in the world. The steward in the parable is called “dishonest” - he’s squandered the master’s property, and, when he knows that he will lose his position - when he knows “the gig is up” - it seems that he is cheating the master even more - rewriting the contracts with the master’s debtors - giving them a discount on what they owe in order to ingratiate himself with them so that when he is out on the street after being let go by the master, they will take him in. So what is he being commended for by the master? He’s commended for being “prudent.” What is Jesus’ lesson for us in the parable? If the dishonest steward, when asked to give an accounting of his stewardship, is prudent enough to plan his earthly future so as to receive a welcome into people’s homes, how much more ought the “faithful and prudent steward” of the Lord, who will have to render an account to God when his stewardship is over (i.e., when he dies), prudently plan for a heavenly future so as to be welcomed into eternal dwellings! Jesus warns us that often it is the case that worldly people are more prudent when it comes to their financial future than his own disciples are when it comes to making prudent decisions in light of their eternal judgment. The prudent steward is thinking ahead. He is making decisions now with the resources he has access to with an eye to his future well-being. Do we take for granted that our future salvation is secure, or are we planning wisely now so as to be “rich in what matters to God” (Lk 12:21)? Here Jesus continues his teaching on being dependent on God and not on worldly goods. The prudent disciple, with a proper perspective on earthy goods, will sell his belongings and give alms - providing “money bags” for himself that do not wear out, “an inexhaustible treasure in heaven that no thief can reach nor moth destroy” (Lk 12:33). Charity is an “unfailing” treasure. We shouldn’t put our trust in earthly goods because they, just like our earthly life, will eventually fail. A disciple who is a prudent steward will paradoxically give away wealth and remit debts. It seems like he is doing what the dishonest steward is doing, but in reality he is doing what Jesus calls us to do for the jubilee. We are in a Jubilee Year. This is a time in which we are to be renewed in the experience of God’s mercy and to seek to be better representatives of his mercy here on earth. This is really what we will be judged on. Do we love one another as God has loved us? We are reminded of this every time we pray the “Our Father” when we say, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” In some translations, “trespasses” is rendered as “debts”. Have we forgiven those who have sinned against us? Pray for this grace. Pray for the grace to forgive. Go to confession and confess any hardness of heart toward those who have offended you. Confess a lack of forgiveness toward others. Receive God’s mercy in the sacrament, and with God’s grace, you can release them from the debt that they owe you. That’s what forgiveness does.

How we use earthly wealth is directly related to our heavenly treasure. “If, therefore, you are not trustworthy with dishonest wealth, who will trust you with true wealth?” “Dishonest wealth” is worldly treasure, but, as we hear too in this Gospel, everything of this world “belongs to another”, i.e., it belongs to God. If we treat it as our own, we end up trusting in it instead of God. We end up serving it instead of God. Money becomes our master instead of God. “You cannot serve both God and mammon.”

“Stewardship” is a term that refers to how we use the time, talent, and treasure that God has entrusted to us. Do we see what we have been given as a way to represent Christ in the world? The way we use our time, talent, and treasure speaks to whether we are serving God or money. Are we serving God or simply ourselves? Are we working for an earthly future or an eternal salvation? Mercy is the measure that God uses. Is it ours? How we treat the least of our brothers and sisters - how we treat the poor - determines how we will be judged. The prophet Amos warns those who profess to be faithful but really hold money as their measure and take advantage of the poor that the Lord will not forget a thing that they have done. Don’t put off being charitable, merciful, and forgiving to the moment when the Lord calls you to account for your stewardship. Now is the time to be both prudent and faithful, so that when we meet the Lord at our judgment, we will hear the words, “Well done, my good and faithful servant. Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities. Come, share your master’s joy.” (Mt 25:21).

September 14, 2025 / 14 de septiembre de 2025

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siempre con destino al bien. Y si creemos en ello, podemos sufrir con paciencia. ¡Que Dios los bendiga!

Exaltation of the Holy Cross - AI, suffering, and how Christ restores our humanity

I listened to a very provocative podcast last week on what Artificial Intelligence, i.e. AI, will do to humanity. It was an interview with a fellow named Forrest Maready. Maready is an artist and an author with professional experience in computer programming. The host and guest of the show were coming at the question not from a religious perspective, but what I found to be super interesting was their conclusion. The bigger threat that AI poses to us is not what some doomers think - what we see in the sci-fi movies like The Terminator - that robots and drones will take over the world and kill us all, but that AI will make life so easy for us - eliminating all suffering - that meaning will cease to exist. Without meaning, we lose our humanity. Meaning comes from suffering - bearing suffering. Suffering is the engine by which humans prosper. It is the engine through which we flourish. We even take on suffering willingly as an investment in flourishing. Why do we exercise or go to the gym? We can say that it is a form of self-inflicted suffering. Because it is an investment in our long-term health. Why do we make the sacrifice of not eating the donut - the thing that will give us an immediate pleasure, because we are investing in our future health. A child does a lot of wrote exercises - the work to memorize things - times tables and poetry - working out math problems, as a way to develop the brain for high-level thinking. The hard work and sacrifice put in when we are young - learning to delay gratification - pays off when we grow up. If we don’t learn to suffer and sacrifice when we are young, will we ever really mature and be able to deal with reality? The presenter’s concern was that AI will give us the sense that there is no scarcity. When resources are scarce, they have value and we work and find creative ways to overcome the scarcity. “Necessity is the mother of invention,” as the saying goes. This “work” gives our life meaning. Without scarcity, the human experience diminishes. He used the example of music. It used to be an event - often a moving and life-changing event - to hear music. You had to walk or to get in a carriage and go to a concert hall - probably one of the most beautiful buildings in the town - to hear music. There was a sacrifice to have such an experience. With the advent of technology from records to radio to Spotify on the internet, this music is accessible to just about everybody, but the experience is not the same. It is much less meaningful since you can get it with the click of button on your computer or your phone. Now with AI, you don’t even need musicians to make music. You can make your own music to fit your particular musical fancy. We will lose the joy of seeing something exceptional because nothing will be “exceptional” anymore - it will all be at our fingertips. What work and effort and suffering went into earning a PhD - making a meaningful contribution. Now, the same level of research can be done with hardly any effort in comparison. Technology is essentially the elimination of suffering. Suffering is effectively the key to a meaningful life. At some point, the way things are going, the technology will overcome the possibility of meaning. It will be very hard to resist the temptation to get the “accomplishment” without putting in the meaningful work. We think we can get the joy and the meaning without the sacrifice. We will try to get pleasure without real accomplishment. Maready’s concern is that AI, like cocaine or heroin, once we get hooked on it, will wreck our lives. To those who are already narcissistic, AI will give one the illusion of being god-like. We will turn to AI like an all-knowing, all-powerful god, but instead of giving us what we need - what we need to know for life, it will give us only what we want to hear, and then we will become a slave to it like we are worshipping a false idol, a god of our own making. And that will lead to our own destruction.

Most of us already know that with the internet, smart phones, Amazon, and google, we are used to getting things - answers, information, stuff, etc. almost instantaneously- just ask “Siri” or “Google”. We just about anything, we can get same day or next day delivery. But in the process, we are losing the ability to think for ourselves and we are losing the ability to suffer - we lose our ability to have patience. To be patient with others. We have “convenience” but at what cost? At what cost to our humanity? Our ability to have a human interaction with others - to suffer with others with all their weaknesses and limitations. We’ve been forming ourselves to get what we want without limitations - to have instant gratification, but real people - (e.g., spouses and children) - are not easy to deal with because of their limitations. Limitation is what defines our humanity. So we have a tendency to isolate ourselves in order not to deal with difficulty or adversity; but without that “suffering”, we do not grow; we cannot be converted or change; our lives are stunted and lack meaning. And when we lack patience, we complain.

The Israelites were on a journey to the promised land - a journey to salvation, but they wanted that salvation without the suffering. They lose patience because they think their journey is a dead end. They complain: “Why have you brought us up from Egypt to die in this desert?” To complain - an expression of an unwilling to suffer - brings a greater “punishment” because you not only have the objective pain or discomfort of the situation, but the added anxiety, bitterness, anger, and resentment of the complaint on top of it. This is what the Lord teaches them with the seraph serpents in the story from the Book of Numbers. When the Israelites admit their sin, the Lord doesn’t take the serpents away from them. Instead, he gives them a way to live after being bitten. They have to look at a bronze serpent fashioned by Moses which he mounted on a pole. Moses is a prefigurement of Christ, and Jesus references this event from the Book of Numbers in reference to his own death on the cross. Jesus will take upon himself the effects of sin and the punishments of sin and take them to the cross. He also takes upon himself, as an innocent victim, the suffering of all the innocent - all unjust suffering. When we freely take on suffering, for example, when we exercise or study, it is because we can “see” the purpose. With unjust suffering, we can’t see the purpose. It looks like a dead end. It looks like we are stuck - we are not going anyplace meaningful. That is why we lose patience. When we look at the Cross and Christ crucified for us, we see that God has made a path to salvation from the worst possible thing - from even unjust suffering. “He humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.” Obedience is listening and following. Jesus listens and follows the path given to him, even when from a human standpoint it seems to go nowhere. He has the patience to stay on the path. Stay on the journey. This is why the cross is our hope. When he is lifted up on the Cross, he opens the path to eternal life. In the resurrection, God exalted him. And when we stay with Jesus and believe in him, our crosses become the means for our salvation. We cannot avoid suffering without losing our humanity. Christ came in human likeness and was found in human appearances to give meaning to our suffering and to be with us in our suffering. Christ crucified restores our humanity because our humanity is made to be exalted to heaven. When we experience unjust suffering, lose our patience, and find ourself complaining, take a moment to look at the Crucifix. With Christ, the path that we are on is never a dead end but always a path to eternal life - always heading someplace good. And if we believe that, we can suffer it with patience.

September 21, 2025/21 de septiembre de 2025

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September 14, 2025 / 14 de septiembre de 2025

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