Jesus said to his disciples:
"I tell you, make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth,
so that when it fails, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.
Not wealth that we gained dishonestly, but worldly wealth generally. By comparison to heaven, where true treasure is to be found, all worldly wealth is deceptive. It seems to whisper to us of its power to solve our problems and we are tempted to believe it and even to love it. We become forgetful that it is the nature of wealth to be fickle, here at one moment, gone the next. Forgetting this, we build silos of ever increasing scale in order to store more and more. And wealth is deceptive here too, for it always seems that a little more will be enough when, of course, it never is. This is to say nothing of all of the history of systemic injustice that is associated with wealth and privilege.
Since worldly wealth is more of a liability than a solution to our problems our best option is to dispose of it, as much as possible, in favor of greater goods. Wealth will one day fail us but "Charity never faileth" (see First Corinthians 13:8). And whereas love of wealth has the tendency to lead to sin even to the point of despising God, genuine love "covers a multitude of sins" (see First Peter 4:8). Rather than being like the rich fool and hoarding riches that must one day fail we can instead be like Zacchaeus.
"Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold" (see Luke 19:8).
See how the response of Jesus assured Zacchaeus that he had indeed found the promise of an eternal dwelling: "Today salvation has come to this house" (see Luke 19:9).
Should we be surprised that it is said that the poor are the ones who will welcome us into eternal dwellings and then see that it Jesus himself who does so? No, because: "as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me" (see Matthew 25:40).
It is not the case that we put Jesus in our debt as though he is obliged to us for our service. It is rather the case that he is rewarding us in order to train us and to help us grow. By our faithfulness in very small matters he is making us grow ready to be entrusted with true wealth, the life of heaven.
If, therefore, you are not trustworthy with dishonest wealth,
who will trust you with true wealth?
If you are not trustworthy with what belongs to another,
who will give you what is yours?
God wants to give us himself. Him only can we hope to possess for all eternity, and he alone will never fail nor forsake us. But to receive him we must let go of our attachment to the illusory delights of this temporary world. We must become poor in spirit if what we desire is to possess the Kingdom.
what is of human esteem is an abomination in the sight of God.
At the end of today's passage Jesus gives us a helpful reminder of whose opinion truly matters. It is not that of the media, nor the Internet, not the right or the left. It is not even our friends or family. All these groups are subject to deception by our own self-aggrandizing propaganda. And seeing them believe it we too are tempted to believe it. But God is not deceived. Our excuses fail us in the sight of him who sees all things. So let us attempt to dispose our hearts sincerely before the God who knows our hearts. Only in this way will we escape the gravity of living as fallen creatures in a fallen world and begin to ascend, by grace, to that place where we hope to live forever.
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