September 21, 2025
Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 135
Reading 1
Hear this, you who trample upon the needy
and destroy the poor of the land!
"When will the new moon be over," you ask,
"that we may sell our grain,
and the sabbath, that we may display the wheat?
We will diminish the ephah,
add to the shekel,
and fix our scales for cheating!
We will buy the lowly for silver,
and the poor for a pair of sandals;
even the refuse of the wheat we will sell!"
The LORD has sworn by the pride of Jacob:
Never will I forget a thing they have done!
Responsorial Psalm
R. (cf. 1a, 7b) Praise the Lord who lifts up the
poor.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Praise, you servants of the LORD,
praise the name of the LORD.
Blessed be the name of the LORD
both now and forever.
R. Praise the Lord who lifts up the poor.
or:
R. Alleluia.
High above all nations is the LORD;
above the heavens is his glory.
Who is like the LORD, our God, who is enthroned on high
and looks upon the heavens and the earth below?
R. Praise the Lord who lifts up the poor.
or:
R. Alleluia.
He raises up the lowly from the dust;
from the dunghill he lifts up the poor
to seat them with princes,
with the princes of his own people.
R. Praise the Lord who lifts up the poor.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Reading 2
Beloved:
First of all, I ask that supplications, prayers,
petitions, and thanksgivings be offered for everyone,
for kings and for all in authority,
that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life
in all devotion and dignity.
This is good and pleasing to God our savior,
who wills everyone to be saved
and to come to knowledge of the truth.
For there is one God.
There is also one mediator between God and men,
the man Christ Jesus,
who gave himself as ransom for all.
This was the testimony at the proper time.
For this I was appointed preacher and apostle
— I am speaking the truth, I am not lying —,
teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.
It is my wish, then, that in every place the men should pray,
lifting up holy hands, without anger or argument.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Though our Lord Jesus Christ was rich, he became poor,
so that by his poverty you might become rich.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Jesus said to his disciples,
"A rich man had a steward
who was reported to him for squandering his property.
He summoned him and said,
'What is this I hear about you?
Prepare a full account of your stewardship,
because you can no longer be my steward.'
The steward said to himself, 'What shall I do,
now that my master is taking the position of steward away from me?
I am not strong enough to dig and I am ashamed to beg.
I know what I shall do so that,
when I am removed from the stewardship,
they may welcome me into their homes.'
He called in his master's debtors one by one.
To the first he said,
'How much do you owe my master?'
He replied, 'One hundred measures of olive oil.'
He said to him, 'Here is your promissory note.
Sit down and quickly write one for fifty.'
Then to another the steward said, 'And you, how much do you owe?'
He replied, 'One hundred kors of wheat.'
The steward said to him, 'Here is your promissory note;
write one for eighty.'
And the master commended that dishonest steward for acting prudently.
"For the children of this world
are more prudent in dealing with their own generation
than are the children of light.
I tell you, make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth,
so that when it fails, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.
The person who is trustworthy in very small matters
is also trustworthy in great ones;
and the person who is dishonest in very small matters
is also dishonest in great ones.
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?
No servant can serve two masters.
He will either hate one and love the other,
or be devoted to one and despise the other.
You cannot serve both God and mammon."
Or
Jesus said to his disciples:
"The person who is trustworthy in very small matters
is also trustworthy in great ones;
and the person who is dishonest in very small matters
is also dishonest in great ones.
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?
No servant can serve two masters.
He will either hate one and love the other,
or be devoted to one and despise the other.
You cannot serve both God and mammon."
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/092125.cfm
Commentary on Amos
8:4-7; 1 Timothy 2:1-8; Luke 16:1-13
Each of the readings today makes a separate, but related,
point:
- A
warning from the prophet Amos on swindling and cheating in business;
- An
exhortation to pray for those in authority;
- How
to make use of our material goods.
A world of injustice
During the 8th century BC, the prophet Amos arrived in the prosperous kingdom
of Israel. Behind the glitter of political and religious life, he saw a world
of injustice and exploitation of the poor. He wrote his denunciations long
before the time of Christ, but they sound perfectly familiar to anyone living
in any prosperous city of our own day. Cheating on weights and measures,
tampering with scales (now calculators and computers!), inflating the value of
goods and deflating the value of money, buying up the poor for money (“Every
man has his price”), finding someone gullible enough to buy what is basically
trash, and so on. Practically every year, in nearly every country, corruption
among the rich and politically powerful is reported. And for the most part, it
involves far greater sums of money and a higher level of criminality than the
procession of petty criminals that pass through our courts daily and who are
portrayed with such disdain and condescension in our media.
In over 2,000 years of ‘civilisation’ and ‘religion’, hardly
anything has changed. In spite of social welfare, the poor and the needy
continue to be exploited and trampled on. The very existence of social welfare
is the result of social imbalances in the distribution of a community’s wealth.
And yet some are even critical of the existence of social welfare, saying “Let
them work hard like the rest of us!” One is reminded of the late Bishop Helder
Camara of Recife in Brazil. He was an outspoken critic of injustice in his
society. He used to say: “When I give money to the poor, they call me a saint;
when I ask why they are poor, they call me a Communist.”
We are all familiar with the dramatic crimes involving
robberies and shootouts on our streets by ‘gangsters’ and ‘thugs’. But far more
money is disappearing—immorally and illegally—in plush air-conditioned offices
by those oh-so-respectable people wearing expensive suits and tooling around in
luxury cars.
Serious imbalances
Such an abuse of the use of money and property results in serious imbalances
both in our own society and in societies elsewhere. The world is divided now
into North (rich) and South (poor), between a First and a Third (and even a
Fourth) World.
So many are driven to get rich. “What’s wrong with being
rich?” people ask. Catholics can be, and sometimes are, very rich. But is it
possible that no one can really become rich without (many) others being made or
kept poor? To be defined as rich in our society means having more, much more,
than the average person.
But some may argue, what do purely social and economic
matters have to do with the Church and religion? What business has the Church
meddling in the market place? Ask Amos that question. Ask Jesus that question:
I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the
eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God. (Matt
19:24)
It is not just because the man is rich, but because to be
regarded as rich he must have goods which are denied in justice to others. We
cannot say we love God if we do not love our brothers. Such a person cannot be
in the Kingdom:
Lord, lord, open to us. But he replied, ‘Truly I tell
you, I do not know you.’ (Matt 25:11-12)
To be actively unjust to others is to deny love to them. It
is not enough ‘just’ to pray, as the Apostle James tells us:
For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith
without works is also dead. (James 2:26)
Put in the vernacular, an example might be, “I’m really
sorry for your trouble, but I will pray for you at Mass on Sunday.”
In so far as economic matters touch on moral issues—justice,
the dignity of the individual, basic human rights—then they certainly concern
the Christian and the church community. To be an agent—actively or passively—of
injustice is to deny love to another.
Luck of the draw
In our capitalist society built on competitiveness, we seem to accept that
there are (some) winners and (many) losers. We can even attribute it to ‘the
luck of the draw’. In that case, we basically accept the situation as ‘normal’.
Many of us Christians have a deep (if largely unconscious) need to become more
aware of just what Christian love and compassion actually entails. It can never
be accepted as ‘normal’ for people to live in inadequate housing, to have to
work in intolerable conditions, to have to work twelve or more hours a day
seven days a week just to make ends meet, to have to endure hunger or
malnutrition over long periods or to have to sell their bodies in prostitution
or near-slavery.
Nor, while people live in such conditions, can it be
accepted as ‘normal’ that others live in comfort and luxury, especially if the
source of their wealth comes from the exploitation of those who are living
below the level of human dignity. No aware Christian can accept such a
situation or, still less, be a contributor to such imbalances. Unfortunately,
many of us are, wittingly or unwittingly, contributors. We show it by our own
frenetic participation in trying to climb to the top and pushing our children
to the top.
It is not a question, of course, of advocating total
equality. On many levels, people are quite unequal. But on the level of dignity
and rights, no one can claim superiority over another person. Any diminution of
human dignity (which demands a certain minimum material standard of living)
cannot be tolerated by the conscientious and loving Christian. Some have been
given more talents than others (and the Gospel clearly recognises this), but
these gifts are to be used not to get more for oneself, but to offer more for
the building up of the Kingdom community. The greater our gifts, the greater
our responsibility to share them with those who have less.
Praying for our leaders
The exhortation, then, in the Second Reading to pray especially for those in
authority, in this context, makes sense. Those in authority do need our prayers
that the power entrusted to them is used for the well-being of every person in
the community. Considering that the presumed writer of this letter (Paul or
some other Christian leader) was himself the victim of savage persecution by
some authorities, he is not telling us to give our unqualified support to all
the policies of our leaders. The Church can never, and and should never,
identify itself fully with any civil administration. At best, there should be
what Cardinal Jaime Sin of Manila used to call “critical co-operation”. But at
worst, it may also require an out and out denunciation of an administration’s
immoral practices and policies.
Stewardship
And so the Gospel speaks about stewardship. A steward is a person who is made
responsible to handle the goods and property of his employer. The steward in
the Gospel today was a bad steward because he was wasteful of his master’s
property. He was going to be fired so he took steps to guarantee his future
employability, and:
…his master commended the dishonest manager because he
had acted shrewdly…
Jesus obviously told this story not to
encourage dishonesty, but to draw attention to the foresight of the steward. He
continues:
And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of
dishonest wealth so that when it is gone they may welcome you into the eternal
homes.
Jesus’ choice of a “manager” or ‘steward’ in today’s passage
is altogether to the point. We need to be constantly reminded that we are the
stewards and never the owners of what we possess. We have no absolute right to
anything we have. “I can do what I like with my money and property because it’s
mine” is not a statement any committed Christian can make. So the question of a
successful life is not “How much did you make?”, but “How did you use what you
had to creative purposes for the general welfare of all?” That is the way to
make the friends Jesus talks about in the Gospel.
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https://livingspace.sacredspace.ie/oc251g/
Sunday,
September 21, 2025
Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Opening Prayer
Lord, my Father, today I bring before you my
weakness, my shame, my distance from you; I no longer hide my dishonesty and
infidelity, because you know and see everything, in depth, with the eyes of
your love and of your compassion. I ask you, good Doctor, pour on my wound the
balm of your Word, of your voice which speaks to me, calls me and teaches me.
Do not take away your gift, Who is the Holy Spirit: allow him to breathe on me,
as a breath of life, from the four winds; that He envelops me as a tongue of fire
and inundates me as water of salvation; send Him to me from your holy Heaven,
as the dove of truth, to announce, today also, that you are and that you wait
for me, that you take me with you, after all, as on the first day, when you
shaped me and created and called me.
Gospel Reading
To Insert the Passage in its Context:
This evangelical pericope belongs to the
great section of the narration of Luke which includes the long journey of Jesus
towards Jerusalem; it opens in Lk 9: 51 to end in Lk 19: 27. This section, in
turn, is subdivided into three parts, as three stages in the journey of Jesus,
each one of which is introduced by an annotation almost like a repetition:
“Jesus resolutely turned his face towards Jerusalem” (9:
51); “Through towns and villages
he went teaching, making his way to Jerusalem” (13: 22); “…on the way to
Jerusalem he was travelling in the borderlands of Samaria and Galilee” (17:
11); to reach the conclusion in 19: 28: “When he had said this he went on
ahead, going up to Jerusalem,” when Jesus enters the City.
We find ourselves in the second part, from Lk
13: 22 to 17, 10 which includes diverse teachings, which Jesus offers to his
interlocutors: the crowds, the Pharisees, the Scribes, the disciples. In this
unity, Jesus enters into dialogue with his disciples and offers them a parable,
to indicate which is the correct use of the goods of this world and how our own
life should be concretely
administered, inserted in a filial relation
with God. Then follow three “sayings” or secondary applications of the same
parable in diverse situations, which help the disciples to make space for the
new life in the Spirit, which the Father offers them.
To Help in the Reading of the Passage:
•
vv. 1-8: Jesus
tells the parable of the wise and shrewd steward: a man, accused of his
excessive greed, which has become unbearable, who finds himself in a decisive
and difficult moment in his life, but who succeeds to use all his human
resources to turn to good his clamorous failure. Just like this son of the
world has known how to discern his own interests, so also the children of light
have to learn to discern the will of love and the gift of their Father, to live
like Him.
•
v. 9: Jesus
makes us understand that also dishonest and unjust richness, which is that of
this world, if used for the good, as a gift, leads to salvation.
•
vv.
10-12: Jesus explains that the goods of this world are not to be demonized,
but rather are to be understood for the value which they have. They are said to
be
•
“minimum,” they are “the little” of our life,
but we are called to administer them faithfully and attentively, because they
are a means to enter into communion with the brothers and sisters and
therefore, with the Father.
•
v. 13: Jesus
offers a fundamental teaching: there is only one and unique end in our life and
this is God, the Lord. To seek to serve any other reality means to become
slaves, to bind ourselves to deceit and to die even now. The Gospel Text - Luke 16: 1-13:
1 He also said to his disciples,
'There was a rich man and he had a steward who was denounced to him for being
wasteful with his property. 2 He called for the man and said, "What is
this I hear about you? Draw me up an account of your stewardship because you
are not to be my steward any longer." 3 Then the steward said to himself,
"Now that my master is taking the stewardship from me, what am I to do?
Dig? I am not strong enough. Go begging? I should be too ashamed. 4 Ah, I know
what I will do to make sure that when I am dismissed from office there will be
some to welcome me into their homes." 5 'Then he called his master's
debtors one by one. To the first he said, "How much do you owe my
master?" 6 "One hundred measures of oil," he said. The steward
said, "Here, take your bond; sit down and quickly write fifty." 7 To
another he said, "And you, sir, how much do you owe?" "One
hundred measures of wheat," he said. The steward said, "Here, take
your bond and write eighty." 8 'The master praised the dishonest steward
for his astuteness. For the children of this world are more astute in dealing
with their own kind than are the children of light.'
9
'And so I tell you this: use money, tainted as
it is, to win you friends, and thus make sure that when it fails you, they will
welcome you into eternal dwellings.
10
Anyone who is trustworthy in little things is
trustworthy in great; anyone who is dishonest in little things is dishonest in
great. 11 If then you are not trustworthy with money, that tainted thing, who
will trust you with genuine riches? 12 And if you are not trustworthy with what
is not yours, who will give you what is your very own?
13 'No servant can be the slave of two masters: he will
either hate the first and love the second or be attached to the first and
despise the second. You cannot be the slave both of God and of money.'
A Moment of Prayerful Silence
I accept the silence of this moment, of this sacred time of
encounter with Him. I who am poor, without money, without possessions, without
house and without my own strength, because nothing comes from me, but
everything comes from Him, it is His, I allow myself to be taken in by His
richness of compassion and of mercy.
Some Questions
•
Like any Christian I am also an “administrator”
of the Lord, the rich Man of our existence, the Only One Who possesses goods
and riches. What is it that regulates my thoughts daily and, consequently, my
daily choices, my actions, my relations?
•
Life, goods, the gifts which my Father has given
me, these infinite riches, which are worth more than any other thing in the
world, am I wasting them, am I throwing them away like pearls to the pigs?
•
The unfaithful steward, but wise and shrewd,
suddenly changes his life, changes relations, calculations, thoughts. Today is
a new day, it is the beginning of a new life, regulated according to the logics
of remission, of pardon, of distribution: do I know that true wisdom is hidden
in mercy?
•
“Either you will love one or will love the
other….” Whose servant do I want to be? In whose house do I want to live?
Together with whom do I want to live my life?
A Key for Reading
“Who is the steward of the Lord?
Luke in the parable uses the
term “administrator or steward” or
“administration”
seven times, and thus it becomes the key word of the passage and of the
message that the Lord wants to give me. Then, I try to look in Scripture for
some traces, or a light which will help me to understand better and to verify
my life, the administration that the Lord has entrusted to me. In the Old
Testament several times this reality is repeated, especially referring to the
royal richness or to the richness of the city or of the empires: in the Books
of the Chronicles, for example, it is spoken about the administrators of King
David (1 Ch 27: 31; 28: 1) and also in the Book of Esther (3: 9), Daniel (2:
49; 6: 4) and Tobias (1: 22) the meeting of administrators of the kings and the
princes. It is totally worldly administration, linked to possessions, to money,
to wealth, to power; therefore, bound to a negative reality, such as the
accumulation, usurpation, violence. It is, in one word, an administration which
ends, which is short-lived and deceitful, no matter if it is recognized that
this is also, in a certain way, necessary for the good functioning of society.
The New Testament, on the other hand,
immediately introduces me into a diverse dimension, higher, because it concerns
the things of the spirit, of the soul, those things which do not end, do not
change with the change of time and of persons. Saint Paul says: “Each one
should consider himself as Christ’s servant, steward entrusted with the
mysteries of God. In such a matter, what is expected of stewards is that each
one should be found trustworthy” (1Cor 4: 1 ff). and Peter: “Each one of you
has received a special grace, so, like good stewards responsible for all these
varied graces of God, put it at the service of others” (1P 4: 10). Therefore, I
understand that I am also an administrator of the mysteries and of the grace of
God, through the simple and poor instrument, which is my own life; in it I am
called to be faithful and good. But this
adjective “good,” is the same which John uses referring to the Shepherd, to
Jesus: “kalòs” that is, beautiful and good. And, why? Simply, because He offers His life to the Father for the
sheep. This is the unique, true administration which is entrusted to me in this
world, for the future world.
What is the shrewdness of the administrator
of the Lord?
The passage says that the master praises his
dishonest steward, because he acted with “astuteness” and he repeats the word
“shrewd,” a bit later. Perhaps a more correct translation could be “sage,” that
is “wise,” or “prudent.” It is a wisdom that results from an attentive, deep
thinking, from reflection, from study and the application of the mind, of
affection to something which is of great interest. As an adjective this term is
found, for example in Mt 7: 24, where true wisdom is shown of the man who
builds his house on the rock and not on the sand, that is the man who founds
his existence on the Word of the Lord or also in Mt 25, where he says that the
virgins who, together with their lamps, had the oil were wise, so that they
will not be taken over by darkness, but who know how to wait always with
invincible, incorruptible love, for their Spouse and Lord, when he returns.
Therefore, this steward is wise and prudent, not because he takes advantage of
others, but because he has known how to regulate and transform his life
according to the measure and the form of the life of his Lord: he has committed
himself totally, with his whole being, mind, heart, will, desire in imitating
the one he serves. Dishonesty and
injustice
Another word which is repeated many times is “dishonest,”
“dishonesty”; the steward is said to be dishonest and thus also richness.
Dishonesty is a characteristic which can corrode the being, in big things, in
the great, but also in the minimum, in the small. The Greek text does not
precisely use the word “dishonest,” but the “administrator or steward of
injustice,” “richness of injustice,” and “unjust in the minimum,” “unjust in
much.” Injustice is a bad distribution, not impartial or just, not balanced; it
lacks harmony, it lacks a centre which will attract all energy, all care and
intent to itself; it causes fractures, wounds, pain over pain, accumulation on
one side and lack of all on the other. All of us, in some way, come into
contact, with the reality of injustice, because it belongs to this world. And
we feel dragged on one and other side, we lose harmony, balance and beauty; and
we cannot deny it because it is like that. The Gospel precisely condemns this
strong lack of harmony, which is accumulation, to keep things aside, to
increase them always more, possession and it shows us the way to obtain
healing, which is a gift or giving, sharing, to give with an open heart, with
mercy, like the Father does with us, without getting tired, without becoming
less or poor. And, what is mammon?
The word mammon appears in the whole Bible, in this chapter of
Luke in (vv. 9,
11, and 13) and in Mt 6: 24. It
is a Semitic term which corresponds to “riches,” “possession,” “gain,” but it
becomes almost the personification of the god-money which men serve very foolishly,
slaves of that “unquenchable greed, which is idolatry” (Col. 3: 5). Here
everything becomes clear, it is full light. Now, I know well which is the
question which I still have, after the encounter with this Word of the Lord:
“I, whom do I want to serve?” The choice is only one, unique, concrete. I keep
in my heart this stupendous, marvelous and sweet verb, the verb “to serve” and
I ponder it, and I draw from it all the substance of truth which it contains.
The words of Joshua to the people come to my mind: “If serving Yahweh seems a
bad thing to you, today you must make up your minds whom you do mean to serve!”
(Jos 24: 15). I know that I am unjust, that I am an unfaithful administrator,
foolish, I know that I have nothing, but today I choose, with everything that I
am, to serve the Lord. (cf. Ac 20: 19; I Th 1: 9; Ga 1: 10; Rm 12:
11).
A Moment of Prayer: Psalm 49
Reflection of Wisdom on the heart which
finds its riches in the presence of God
Rit. Blessed are
you who are poor: the kingdom of God is yours.
Hear this, all nations, listen,
all who dwell on earth, people high and low, rich and poor alike!
My lips have wisdom to utter,
my heart good sense to whisper.
I listen carefully to a proverb, I set my riddle to the music of the harp.
Rit.
Why should I be afraid in times of
trouble? Malice dogs me and hems me in. They trust in their wealth and boast of
the profusion of their riches. But no one can ever redeem himself or pay his
own ransom to God, the price for himself is too high; it can never be that he
will live on for ever and avoid the sight of the abyss.
Rit.
For he will see the wise also die no
less than the fool and the brute, and leave their wealth behind for others. In
prosperity people lose their good sense, they become no better than dumb
animals.
But my soul God will ransom from the clutches of Sheol and
will snatch me up.
Rit.
Do not be overawed when someone gets rich, and
lives in ever greater splendor; when he dies he will take nothing with him, his
wealth will not go down with him.
Though he pampered himself while he lived
- and people praise you for
looking after yourself - he will go to join the ranks of his ancestors, who
will never again see the light.
Rit.
“God wants a gratuitous love,
that is a pure love…God fills the hearts, not the strongbox or coffer. What are
riches good for if your heart is empty?” (St.
Augustine).
Closing Prayer
Lord, thank you for this time
spent with you, listening to your voice which spoke to me with love and
infinite mercy; I feel that my life is healed only when I remain with you, in
you, when I allow you to take me. You have taken in your hands my greed, which
renders me dry and arid, which closes me up, and makes me sad and leaves me
alone; you have taken my insatiable avarice, which fills me with emptiness and
pain; you have accepted and taken upon yourself my ambiguity and infidelity, my
tired and awkward limping. Lord, I am happy when I open myself to you and show
you all my wounds! Thank you for the balm of your Word and of your silence.
Thank you for the breath of your Spirit, which takes away the bad breath of
evil, of the enemy.
Lord, I have robed, I know it, I have taken
away what was not mine, I have buried it, I have wasted it; from now on I want
to begin to return, to give back, I want to live my life as a gift always
multiplied and shared among many. My life is a small thing, but in your hands
it will become barrels of oil, measures of grain, consolation and food for my
brothers and sisters.
Lord, I have no other words to
say before such great and overflowing love, that is why I do only one thing: I
open the doors of the heart and with a smile, I will accept all those whom you
will send to me… (Ac 28: 30).
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