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Ignatius of Loyola began his early adult life as a mercenary. It was all about the glory of battle for him. He loved fighting and the ways of the world so much that, as he puts in his autobiography, he convinced his troop, ready to surrender, to keep up the fight. The result was he got hit with a cannonball, shattering his leg and leading to a long a difficult recovery.
As he waited to return to his worldly ways, he sought something to entertain him. The only book available to him was about the lives of the saints. Reading this changed what he admired, and he decided to change his life goal to following Christ instead of the world.
And change Ignatius did. He gave up mercenary work and began to beg for alms. In his 30s he went to school even though this was a pursuit typically of people a great deal younger than him. He wrote books still read and studied today as examples for spiritual discipline. He even started a religious order, one of the more famous ones in the Roman Catholic Church: the Jesuits.
Ignatius gave up his career and the ways of the world for what he found to be more important: Jesus. Instead of getting paid to make violence and bloodshed, he forged new relationships built on the foundation of the Lord. He gave up the comfort of a job to allow God and the kindness of strangers to provide what he needed.
Ignatius’ change is the same sort that our Gospel reading today is attempting to bring us to. Now the Shrewd Manager, often known as the Shewd Steward, is much more worldly than even Ignatius was to begin with. His master suspects the Steward of squandering, and the Steward’s reaction heavily implies he is guilty of the charges.
There is great debate over the Steward’s response to his master, and the fact there are so many differing opinions showcases why this is one of the more difficult parables of Jesus to understand. Some say the Steward is righting a wrong by making the sums his master’s debtors owe in line with the Law, though this is unlikely given the context. Some think that the Steward is taking out the interest that would have been his pay. Some additionally believe the Steward does so while, in essence, laying the blame on his master for the original debt owed.
What is actually going on is up for speculation and really doesn’t matter. What matters is this: the Steward’s actions with the debtors, though made purely out of self interest, are about developing relationship.
As the Steward himself states, he doesn’t have the strength for manual labor nor does he posses the humility, as opposed to Ignatius, to beg. If the Steward is going to survive what we can only surmise to be his soon-to-be firing then he needs help. He needs to cultivate relationships with others. That is what he is doing by adjusting the debtors’ receipts now.
Jesus’ words at the end of the story tells us to make friends with others. That’s really the whole point of having the wealth. The Shrewd Steward makes friends through for his own self interest and gains a great deal. As Jesus points out to us, why can’t we, the children of light, do the same in our own dealings?
That’s exactly what Ignatius did. He put his old life behind him. He put his wealth behind him. He gave his life to the church. He gave his life to build relationships with his fellow Jesuits as well as others in order to help give them them tools to deepen their connection to God.
Relationship with God and one another is what it is all about. That’s really what we get from this parable. It also happens to be what we hear each Sunday at the start of our service with the Two Great Commandments. The goal of our wealth is building for ourselves not what is earthly but what is heavenly. We do that by helping others, as we see in the Gospel as well as our readings from the Prophets today. By building those relationships with others, we are really building up our relationship with God, because we can only serve one master: God, not wealth.
In many ways, our Gospel today is one of stewardship. It calls on us not to hold onto our wealth, but to use it in the service of our fellow human beings and our Lord God. It also speaks to our institutions, like our church, which I hope you do trust to perform God’s will with what you give from your wealth. As institutions, we have to be mindful not only of what we are doing with our wealth, but also that we continue to make sure God, and God alone, is the one we are turning to.
These were concerns Ignatius had in his life together with his fellow Jesuits. He could have chosen the easy way when it came to money. Instead, he chose the path that would ensure that he and his brothers continued to rely and trust in God alone to get them through the journey.
We are called to do the same. Our wealth means nothing if we do not serve God with it, and we cannot do that if we serve two masters as Jesus reminds us. Our wealth, for all of us, is meant to help us forge better relationships with one another and by doing so become closer to God.
Yet there can be other ways that can keep us from forging those relationships. There can be other ways in which we can keep others from the love of God even. Our task is to examine ourselves from time to time and see the roadblocks in our path back to God and to remove them. Ask yourselves, is there something other than God you are serving? Is there something other than God that we, as a parish community are serving? If so, then we must cast it aside or, as we have seen today with wealth, use it to forge better relationships with one another and in this way make our path back to God. For at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is our ability to move closer and better forge our relationships with God and each other. That is the lesson we ultimately learn from Ignatius as well as our Scripture.