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}

The steward was not faithful to his master; he wasted his goods; so he was discharged from his office and had to give an account of his stewardship, as we also shall have to give an account of ours to our Master when we are discharged from it—that is, when we come to die. Then he began to think how he could make use of the means that had been committed to him to provide for himself in the new state of life upon which he had to enter. He had not much time to make his arrangements, but he hit upon a very good plan. In that we do not resemble him, for with all our lifetime to make our arrangements in, and the certainty that we shall have some time to be discharged from our stewardship, and give an account of it before the judgment-seat of God, we too often make none at all. As our Lord says: “The children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light.”

The steward, I say, hit on a good plan; and that was to obtain the favor of his master’s debtors by taking something off the bills which they had to pay, that they might in return contribute something to his support and save him from the necessity of working or begging for the remainder of his life. In this way he made friends for himself with the money which had been committed to him, in order that these friends might receive him into their dwellings when he was turned out of his own.

This is the part of his conduct which we have to imitate. We have to imitate the steward by making friends with the means which our Lord has given us—friends who will be of service to us in the new life upon which we have so soon to enter, the life which comes after death.{341}

But who are these friends to be? Generally people try to buy the favor of the rich and the great. But these are not the friends who are going to be of use to us in the next world.

No, the poor, not the rich, are the ones whose friendship will be of use to us there. In this life they will not help those who help them, because they cannot; but they will in the next. If you help them the blessing which they give you is not only a blessing when you receive it, but it is treasured up for you, long after you have forgotten it, in God’s eternal memory.

He is preparing in heaven beautiful and glorious mansions for these friends of yours, who are also friends of his, to make up for the miserable ones in which they have lived on earth. There are others like them which he is preparing for us all. He has gone to get them ready. “In my Father’s house,” said our Lord, “there are many mansions. … I go to prepare a place for you.”

These mansions are being prepared for you, but whether you enter into their possession depends very much on how you treat the poor, to whom they more properly belong. Be charitable, then, to them, for they have the keys of the homes which you will shortly have to seek.

And in your charity to the poor remember one who is always poor, at least in this country of ours. I mean God’s holy church. She is a very great beggar, and a very tiresome one, I know—always asking you for more; it seems as if she would never be satisfied, and I do not believe she ever will. {342}But then she is a good friend of yours, and what you give to her is, like what you give to other poor people, more for your own good than for hers. For it is chiefly by her help that you are to reach those everlasting dwellings which our Lord promises to you. If you did not do anything for her it certainly would be hard for you to be saved; for it is through her that the means of salvation come. The more liberal you are to her the more liberally will those means be given to you; and if you think you have enough of them, and are quite sure of heaven with what you have got, certainly that is not the case with everybody; and you know we ought to love our neighbor as ourselves.

These, then, God’s poor and his church, are the best friends you can make with the temporal means that he has given you, for they are the ones who can provide for you in that eternity which is coming so soon. Imitate the prudence of the steward, and you will not only make friends as he did, but you will also please your Master, which he did not, and obtain from Him who is your best friend an eternal reward.

Five Minute Sermons for Low Masses on All Sundays of the Year 
Volume 1
Imprimatur 1879