Ostium Catholic

The parable tonight is one of the stranger endorsements in the Gospels: a manager, informed he's about to be fired for mismanagement, quickly renegotiates his employer's outstanding accounts to secure his own future, and Jesus commends not the ethics but the shrewdness. The children of this age, he says, are more prudent in dealing with their own generation than the children of light.

That's a real critique, and it doesn't dissolve just because it's uncomfortable. Most people bring more strategic seriousness to a job search or a negotiation than they bring to the actual state of their soul, despite having far more time-sensitive stakes in the latter. The manager acted with urgency once he understood his position was ending. Few people extend that same urgency to a position - this life - that is, provably, also ending.

Paul's line the same night reframes what's actually at stake: our citizenship is in heaven, and it's from there we await a savior. That's not an argument for disengaging from your actual work. It's a claim about which employer you ultimately answer to, which should change how much weight any single quarter's results are allowed to carry. The manager's urgency, redirected toward that actual employer instead of his current one, is precisely the posture the parable is commending, minus the fraud.

Bring the same strategic seriousness to one spiritual practice this week that you'd bring to a high-stakes negotiation. Prepare for it, don't just show up.

Lord, I've been shrewder about my career than about my soul. Let this account get the urgency I've given the other one. Amen.