Friday, November 6, 2026
Friday of the Thirty-first week in Ordinary Time
Luke 16:1-8
Listen to the whole reading — MP3
First reading
Philippians 3:17-21,4:1
Brothers, be imitators together of me, and note those who walk this way, even as you have us for an example. For many walk, of whom I told you often, and now tell you even weeping, as the enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose god is the belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who think about earthly things. For our citizenship is in heaven, from where we also wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will change the body of our humiliation to be conformed to the body of his glory, according to the working by which he is able even to subject all things to himself. Therefore, my brothers, beloved and longed for, my joy and crown, so stand firm in the Lord, my beloved.
Responsorial psalm
Psalms 122:1-2,3-4,4-5
I was glad when they said to me, “Let’s go to the Lord’s house!” Our feet are standing within your gates, Jerusalem; Jerusalem, that is built as a city that is compact together; where the tribes go up, even the Lord’s tribes, according to an ordinance for Israel, to give thanks to the Lord’s name. For there are set thrones for judgment, the thrones of David’s house.
Gospel
Luke 16:1-8
He also said to his disciples, “There was a certain rich man who had a manager. An accusation was made to him that this man was wasting his possessions. He called him, and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give an accounting of your management, for you can no longer be manager.’ “The manager said within himself, ‘What will I do, seeing that my lord is taking away the management position from me? I don’t have strength to dig. I am ashamed to beg. I know what I will do, so that when I am removed from management, they may receive me into their houses.’ Calling each one of his lord’s debtors to him, he said to the first, ‘How much do you owe to my lord?’ He said, ‘A hundred batos of oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.’ Then he said to another, ‘How much do you owe?’ He said, ‘A hundred cors of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and write eighty.’ “His lord commended the dishonest manager because he had done wisely, for the children of this world are, in their own generation, wiser than the children of the light.
Lectio
There is a strange tension in today's Gospel that we are meant to feel. Jesus praises a man who has, by any ordinary measure, behaved badly. The manager is caught, dismissed, and facing ruin — and in that moment of crisis something sharpens in him. He becomes suddenly clever, suddenly decisive, suddenly willing to act with everything he has. Jesus does not commend the dishonesty. He commends the alertness. The children of this world, he says almost wistfully, know how to read their situation and move. Why are we, who claim to be waiting for something far greater, so often half-asleep?
Paul tells us where our citizenship actually lies. Not here, among the things we can bank and possess and protect, but in heaven, from where we await a Savior who will transform even this tired body into glory. And the manager, oddly, becomes a parable of how to live in light of that. He grasped that his present position was temporary, and he acted accordingly — he used what was passing through his hands to secure what mattered when the accounting came. Paul weeps over those whose "god is the belly," who think only about earthly things, precisely because they have forgotten this. They are managing an estate they imagine they own forever.
The psalmist's gladness — "Let us go to the house of the Lord" — is the gladness of someone who knows where home is. He is not trapped in the city of this world; his feet are already standing, in longing, at the gates of another. That is the shrewdness Jesus wants from us: not anxiety, but the clear-eyed joy of people who know their true address and spend their days accordingly.
Where in your life are you managing something — money, time, a relationship — as though you will hold it forever, when in truth it is only passing through your hands?
If you were told today that your position were ending, who are the people you would want standing with you — and what have you left undone with them that you could begin to repair this week?
Saint of the day
St. Leonard, († c. 550)
Ora reads this aloud, every morning, free. Ora