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 unto him, that he had wasted his goods. And he called him, and said to him: What is this I hear of thee? Give an account of thy stewardship: for now thou canst not be steward. And the steward said within himself: 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 put out of 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 dost thou owe my lord? But he said: A hundred barrels of oil. And he said to him: Take thy bill and sit down quickly, and write fifty. Then he said to another: And how much dost thou owe? Who said: A hundred quarters of wheat. He said to him: Take thy bill and write eighty. {339} And the lord commended the unjust steward, forasmuch 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 to yourselves friends of the mammon of iniquity, that when you shall fail they may receive you into everlasting dwellings. ---------------- Sermon CI. _Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of iniquity, that when you shall fail they may receive you into everlasting dwellings._ --St. Luke xvi. 9. What is this mammon of iniquity of which, or with which (for that is the true sense of the words), we are to make friends for ourselves? It is the money or other property that God has given us to use in this world. We have only to read a few verses more to see that this is what it means; for when our Lord said immediately afterwards, "You cannot serve God and Mammon," the evangelist tells us that "the Pharisees, who were covetous, laughed at him." It is called the mammon of iniquity or injustice, because it is the cause of almost all the injustice in the world. We have, then, to make friends for ourselves with the money or other temporal means which God has entrusted to us. This is what the steward of whom the Gospel tells us did. He was entrusted by his master with the management of an estate. He was to take care of it in his master's interest, not in his own, for it did not belong to him; as we are here to use our property in God's interest, for he is our Master, and what we have really belongs to him and not to ourselves. {340}