The gospel presents the story of a dishonest steward. A steward is accused of malpractices before the big landowner. The master has him called and tells him what he heard about him. The facts are so clear. So he does not try to justify himself or mutter an explanation. He was immediately fired. He starts to reflect. He knows only how to supervise; he is neither able to hoe nor to humble himself to beg for alms. Before leaving the job he must put the accounts in order; many debtors have still to deliver the products. I know what I must do, he exclaims.
He calls all the debtors and reduces their debts. In the future, these benefitted debtors will certainly not forget such generosity and they will feel obliged to offer him hospitality in their houses.
The story concludes with the master, as well as Jesus, praising the administrator. He acted with cunning. He’ll be imitated! We are expecting a different conclusion. Jesus should have said to his disciples: “Do not act like this villain; be honest!” Instead, he approves of what he did. The difficulty lies here: how could a dishonest person be offered as a model?
This difficulty does not exist if the parable is interpreted in a different way. We imagine that the owner was cheated again (2,250 liters of oil and 110 quintals of grain are not small stuff). He would have been outraged. If he praises his former administrator it means, in this process, he has not lost anything. We have to presume that the administrators must deliver a certain amount to their owner; whatever extra they could get goes into their pockets and the figures could be higher. It was the technique used by the publicans to enrich themselves when they collected taxes.
What did the administrator of the parable do? Instead of behaving like a loan shark with the debtors, he left them the profit he expected to have. The administrator was shrewd—says the Lord—because he understood on which to bet on: not on goods, products that he was entitled to, that could rot or be stolen, but on friends. He knew how to renounce the first in order to conquer for himself the second. This is the point.
“Use filthy money to make friends for yourselves so that when it fails, these people may welcome you into the eternal homes” (v. 9). This is the most important saying of today’s passage. It synthesizes the whole teaching of the parable. It is curious to note the remark of Jesus on filthy money. There seems to have something filthy with money. In an economy where everyone is supposed to be equal, if one person has more money than one’s fair share, it is filthy; it has been cheated out of someone! Remember in divine economics, the one who works one hour and eight hours earn the same reward.
What Jesus would like us to understand is that the only a shrewd way of using the goods of this world is to use them to help others, to make them friends. They will be the ones to welcome us in life.
In human economics, money buys things exactly proportionate to its value. In divine economics money buys relationship that more than its value though often it appears wasting money on unprofitable pursuits. While he speaks about money, Jesus advocates two ways of using the money, the shrewd way and the wise way. Shrewd way is that of the administrator in this parable which is the minimum Christian growth expected of us. But, the perfect use of it is to give to others without expecting anything in return. Jesus narrates the story of the rich fool who used all his money for his personal pleasures. Giving to people who cannot return us anything is the divine way of using worldly resources. Remember, Jesus teaches us to throw parties to poor people who cannot give us anything in return. We need to grow into wise invesors of our worldly resources.
Jesus concludes his teaching by affirming that no servant can serve two masters… God or money. We would like to please both: But it’s just one you can serve. Serve God by mastering how to use your riches. Serve God and master the other!
Indebted to Fr. Fernando Armellini SCJ for textual analysis
Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross John 3:13–17
Fr. Jijo Kandamkulathy CMF Claretian Missionaries
Today we celebrate a feast that stands at the very heart of our faith—the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. At first glance, it may seem paradoxical. Why exalt a symbol of suffering, humiliation, and death? Why lift high the very instrument by which our Lord was crucified? And yet, in today’s Gospel, Jesus himself gives us the key to understanding this mystery. Speaking to Nicodemus under the cover of night, he says: “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”
This is not merely a poetic metaphor. It is a profound theological statement that connects the Old and New Testaments in a single thread of salvation. In the Book of Numbers (21:4–9), the Israelites, plagued by venomous serpents due to their rebellion, were instructed by God to look upon a bronze serpent mounted on a pole. Those who gazed upon it in faith were healed. That serpent, a symbol of death transformed into a source of life, prefigures the crucified Christ—lifted high not only on the wood of the cross but in the eyes of all who dare to believe.
Jesus, the Son of Man, descended from heaven not to condemn the world, but to save it. And the means of that salvation was not a triumphant display of power, but the willing embrace of suffering. The cross, once a tool of Roman execution, becomes in Christ the axis of redemption. It is not the avoidance of pain that saves us, but the transformation of pain into love. This is the scandal and the glory of the cross.
Let us pause here and reflect: why does Jesus compare himself to the serpent? Isn’t the serpent the very image of evil in Genesis? And yet, in Numbers, the bronze serpent becomes a sign of healing. This paradox is intentional. Jesus takes upon himself the full weight of sin—not by becoming sinful, but by becoming the very image of sin, as Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:21: “He made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” On the cross, Christ absorbs the venom of the world’s hatred, betrayal, and violence, and does not retaliate. He transforms it into mercy.
This is why the cross is exalted. Not because suffering is good in itself, but because Christ has shown us that suffering, when united with love, becomes redemptive. The cross is not a glorification of pain—it is a glorification of love that does not flee from pain. And this has profound implications for our own lives.
Each of us carries a cross. Some are visible—illness, loss, injustice. Others are hidden—loneliness, anxiety, spiritual dryness. The world tells us to escape suffering, to numb it, to deny it. But the Gospel invites us to look upon the crucified Christ and see that pain can be a pathway to grace. When we lift up our own crosses—not in bitterness, but in faith—we participate in the mystery of redemption. Our wounds, united with his, become sources of healing for others.
This is not easy. It requires a radical reorientation of how we see the world. It requires us to believe, as Jesus said, that “everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.” Belief here is not mere intellectual assent—it is trust, surrender, and imitation. To believe in the crucified Christ is to follow him, even when the path leads through Gethsemane and Golgotha.
And yet, this path does not end in death. The cross is exalted because it points beyond itself. It is the gateway to resurrection. The serpent lifted up in the desert saved the Israelites from physical death. The Son of Man lifted up on the cross saves us from eternal death. This is the promise that animates our faith: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”
Notice the language: God so loved the world. Not just the righteous, not just the faithful, but the world—the broken, the rebellious, the lost. The cross is the ultimate declaration of divine love. It is not a weapon of condemnation, but a banner of salvation. “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”
So today, as we gaze upon the cross, let us not see merely a symbol of suffering. Let us see the triumph of love over hate, of mercy over judgment, of life over death. Let us bring our own crosses to the foot of his, and ask for the grace to carry them with faith. Let us remember that every pain, every trial, every moment of darkness can become redemptive—if we unite it with Christ.
And let us never forget: the cross is not the end of the story. It is the beginning of resurrection. It is the tree of life planted in the soil of suffering. It is the throne from which Christ reigns—not with coercion, but with compassion.
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