With the soaring prices of basic commodities, one is challenged on how to make ends meet. For P15,200 (average salary in the Philippines as of 2020), how can one pay his bills (electricity and water bills), buy food, and finance the education of his children? People are left with no choice but to be creative in dealing with this tough time. When push comes to shove, one's survival instinct kicks in. Out of this sorry situation, one food cart business is able to come up with a meal set worth P20 only. It is called bentelog. Through P20, one can have a meal for his lunch; a cup of rice, an egg, and a small portion of meat. One needs to pull all his resources together, and do everything to thrive in these trying times. When all these are behind our back, hopefully, we can say: We survive (even with just P20)!
In the gospel (Lk 16:1-13), the master commended a dishonest steward. The master praised the steward, not because of his dishonesty but because he acted prudently. Upon realizing that his evil schemes would be revealed and eventually suffer the severe consequences of his sins against his master, the steward thought of ways on how to over those (future) consequences. The story of the dishonest steward does not aim to teach how to be deceitful but rather to desire and do something that one may survive. By organizing well whatever he had and can, the steward managed to clear a path for his (future) subsistence. For that prudence (wisdom, use of common sense), not for his cheating, his master commended him.
The commendable survival instinct of the steward, we are to imitate, but certainly not that we may also engage with fraudulent deeds. The later part of the gospel (Lk 16:1-13) points us to where we should make use of our desire to withstand any difficulties. Jesus said: I tell you, make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth so that when it fails, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings. Our eyes, and efforts to live in this world, by all means, should be directed to that eternal dwellings; that is Heaven. All the things we do should contribute to our survival in the world-without-end, and not simply in this world that ends. Jesus concludes with the way how we can do this: No servant can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and mammon. To endure until to the world-without-end, we are to make a choice who are we to serve: the masterS of this world or the Master of the eternal dwellings? The key to survival lies in whom we are to choose.
When mammon is chosen; that is to survive merely in this world, corruption and sinfulness seep into our lives, to our very being. When money and worldly riches are foolishly desired and used, they can debase us. They deprive us of desiring God and His kingdom. When money is all that is in our minds, we can do unreasonable things to ourselves and more so to our neighbors. In the book of the prophet Amos (Am 8:4-7), those who chose to survive in this world and serve mammon decided unflinchingly to cheat their neighbor; trampling upon the needy, and destroying the poor of the land. They fix their scales for cheating, buy the lowly for silver, and the poor for a pair of sandals; even the refuse of the wheat they will sell. All this in the name of worldly riches. The LORD will never forget a thing they have done!
Choosing God, and desiring to survive in the next world is no easy task. When we see those who robbed us and steal from the public coffers, living in a prosperous, while those who live in honest ways and eat the fruit of their hard labor, one may be tempted to join the bandwagon living in this world as if there is no next. We may justify ourselves by saying: anyway, everybody is doing it; everybody lies. We can remain steadfast for the choice we make (in choosing God, and to live for the eternal dwellings that await us) through the counsel of St. Paul (1 Tm 2:1-8), I ask that supplications, prayers, petitions, and thanksgivings be offered for everyone, for kings and all in authority, that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life in all devotion and dignity. In the face of temptations to choose God or to cheat our neighbor, we pray and beg for God's grace that we may remain faithful to Him; that our dignity as His children may remain unsullied. And the Lord, hearing our prayers, will lift us in our poverty. We who chose Him, and remain faithful in Him, will survive in the world without end.
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