"Remember, no man is a failure who has friends."
Today, we have the very strange parable about the dishonest steward. However, it really is more a parable about dishonest wealth versus true wealth. Jesus considers any wealth that can lose value, any wealth that can fail, as dishonest wealth. Some modern day examples would be stocks, bonds, mutual funds, real estate, gold and silver, even the dollar itself would be "dishonest" wealth because they can lose value over time. A fool trusts that they can rely on this "dishonest" wealth to be happy.
So, Jesus advises that we "make friends for ourselves with dishonest wealth." The perfect story of a man who made friends for himself with "dishonest" wealth was George Bailey from the movie "It's A Wonderful Life." He ran a savings and loan and used his wealth to help his friends and neighbors. Then, when George Bailey was in financial trouble, all his friends came to bail him out because he had been so good to them. In contrast, folks like Bernie Madoff, the Wall Street crook, who acted dishonestly with the wealth entrusted to him and did not make friends with his wealth, was thrown in jail and everybody cheered.
At the end of the movie "It's A Wonderful Life," the angel Clarence writes a note to George: "Remember, no man is a failure who has friends." We can become so accustomed to putting our faith in our money and serving it that we forget to put our faith in God and serve Him. The true wealth, the honest wealth, that Jesus wants us to invest in and that we can truly count on is friendship and family.
God bless,
Fr. Scott