Hearth & Altar

Jesus tells a strange parable tonight about a dishonest manager who, once he knows he's about to lose his job, quickly settles accounts in his favor before the door closes on him. Jesus doesn't praise the dishonesty. He praises the urgency - the manager used the time he had left, once he knew it was short, better than most people use time they assume they have plenty of.

Paul gives the family a better use for that same urgency: our citizenship is in heaven, and it's from there we're waiting for a savior. Not this town, not this house alone - heaven, the actual place a Christian family is ultimately headed together.

Fridays this month carry a specific practice, and tonight names it plainly: whatever small sacrifice the family already keeps on Fridays, this month it's offered specifically for the names already written in the Book.

The psalm tonight, sung by pilgrims on their way up to Jerusalem, has its own good fit here: I rejoiced when they said to me, let us go to the house of the Lord. A Friday sacrifice offered for the dead is its own small pilgrimage - not a trip anywhere, but a week's ordinary discipline aimed, on purpose, at getting someone else a little closer to that same house.

• For the grace to live toward heaven as our actual citizenship, we pray to the Lord.
• For the grace to use our time as urgently as the dishonest manager used his, but honestly, we pray to the Lord.
• For all in our Book of Names, that our Friday sacrifice tonight would reach them, we pray to the Lord.
• For families keeping the Friday penance together this month, we pray to the Lord.

Keep a meatless supper tonight. Before eating, name the small penance the family is offering this Friday - going without something, or doing something extra - and say plainly that it's offered for everyone in the Book of Names.

Friday penance has been part of Catholic practice for centuries, rooted in remembering the day Christ died. This November, it gets a specific direction: instead of a vague sacrifice, name it as something offered for the actual names your family has written down.

Children often understand offering something up for someone else more easily than adults expect, especially once it's made concrete. "We're skipping dessert tonight for Grandpa" lands more clearly than an abstract explanation of purgatory or indulgences ever could.

If your family doesn't already have a Friday practice, tonight's a fair night to start one, even something as small as no dessert or no screens for an hour. The size of the sacrifice matters far less than actually naming who it's for.