How Can Division Lead us to Truth?

Homily for the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time Cycle C

Given at St. Jude, September 20-21, 2025

By Deacon Ken Steponaitis

Readings: 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Cycle C

Video of the Mass

It's important to remember, God does not sit idly by and let things run as they will and do as they please. God does intervene. For example, God allows things to happen in our world, sometimes difficult things, to sort of shake things up; to help us realize when we are going astray of His desire for us. And I think something like that is happening in our society today.

I don’t know if you sense this, but a lot of things are happening, especially here in the United States that are causing a rise in tensions and uprisings. For example, Fletch Merkel and Harper Moyski, two children killed during an attack at Annunciation Catholic school during Mass in Minnesota. Adam, a teen who’s Mother pleaded with our congress to do something about an AI chatbot which became a confidant and then a suicide coach for her child. The killing of Charlie Kirk in Utah. Iryna Zarutska, a young lady from Ukraine who left her war-torn country only to be stabbed to death on a train in Charlette, North Carolina. And so many more.

But what’s odd is at the same time, and I can’t quite put my finger on it, it seems we are entering a time where people within our society are recognizing that there is a battle between good and evil, justice and injustice, love and hate. It is a battle that can only be dealt with from a perspective of Truth. In fact, it is truth that seems to be the battle line where on one side there are those who believe that humanity can determine truth, and the other side where there are those who recognize that real Truth is found only through faith in God.

For those who believe that the source of truth lies outside things of this world, outside human wisdom, there is a certain peace that comes about if we can come to believe that. That rather than turn to institutions, governments and individuals of this world, that we instead turn to an all-powerful, all-knowing creator who from a Christian perspective wants what is good for us, who seeks us out, who reveals himself and shows us Truth if only we have the eyes to see and the ears to hear.

There is something happening, especially with our young people. They are searching for something they are not getting from the things of this world, and they are realizing this lack of Truth in society. And I think that is happening because of the turmoil we are experiencing.

I’ve read several stories and articles that describe trends that seem to show an increase in the number of people interested in faith. Not just the Catholic Church but it seems all forms of faith. Spirituality seems to be on the increase. And I think one reason for this is many are recognizing that we cannot rely on humanity to determine what is good or evil, just or unjust, truth or lies. That there are certain eternal truths, truths that come from outside our humanity, even outside our physical time and space. They are recognizing that the source of Truth is God.

The Catholic Church in the United States, just several years ago seemed to be hemorrhaging people who were leaving the Church. Now we are seeing a resurgence of people coming into the Church.

This past Tuesday evening, for example, we had our first meeting of those looking to become Catholic through the OCIA process. And what I witnessed was astonishing. Compared to several years ago when we might see 20 or 30 people wanting to become Catholic, on Tuesday we had nearly 70 seeking to become Catholic, with more registrations coming in! And that is only the adults. Parents are recognizing the importance of faith for their children, and we are seeing more children and youth entering faith formation than we have ever seen here at St. Jude.

In our second reading today, Paul sent what we call a pastoral letter to Timothy. It would be kind of like Bishop Burns sending a letter to Fr. Andrew our pastor. In that reading, Paul says something that gets to the heart of what I want to tell you. Paul is talking to Timothy about how best to run his Church. Paul says:

“First of all, I ask that supplications, prayers, petitions, and thanksgivings be offered for everyone, for kings and for all in authority, that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life in all devotion and dignity. This is good and pleasing to God our savior, who wills everyone to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth. For there is one God.”(1 Timothy 2:1-5a)

Paul is telling his pastor Timothy that one focus we must have as a Church is to make sure that we are not excluding anyone. That we need to pray for everyone, including our governmental leaders, and anyone who has authority over us to turn to God for Truth.

Our Gospel reading today has Jesus is telling us how we can do that. How we as a Church can be good stewards, especially to those seeking the Truth of God, seeking that quiet and tranquil life which we call the Kingdom of God.

First let me say that the real purpose of the story of the dishonest steward has everything to do with prudence, with making sure that our focus is on the right authority. That is, we are concerned first about the will of God in our lives and not our own will, our own desires, our own comforts.

And while the details of the story are difficult to reconcile with the overall purpose of Jesus’ message, scholars seem to agree that the real reason the master commends the steward for reducing the amount owed by the debtors was to show that although the steward was trying to essentially save his own butt, and protect his lifestyle, he was being prudent. That every time we recognize our own failures and then cleverly try to appease our master, who is God, we are in a sense turning back to the source of Truth even if we are doing it for the wrong reasons. Even if we are doing it to save our own butts.

Ideally, of course we would turn to God for the right reasons, not just to save ourselves but to save anyone we serve. That would be most prudent.

As more people come into the Church it is so important that we earn their trust. That the people who are turning to faith to find the Truth of God and the Truth of who they are, that we don’t try to cheat them for the sake of numbers. That we don’t become more concerned about the financial standing or the political standing of the Church for fear of losing what we have.

And part of the lesson Jesus is trying to teach is that we can’t place things of this world ahead of the job we are called to do as a Church. That in everything, we must put things of God first.  That to put both the things of this world first while at the same time putting God first, is not possible. We cannot serve both God and Mammon.

When I think of the divisions in our society, those divisions I described earlier about justice and injustice, good and evil, love and hate, truth and lies … one side thinks they are being just as compared to those on the other which seem unjust. Those on one side feel they are being good, compared to those on the other who seem evil. Those on one side seem to think they are more loving than those on the other side who seem hateful. And the reason we have this division is because we don’t know the Truth.

What’s so interesting, however, is that when God made us, God made us to search for the truth. It’s part of our DNA. It’s part of who we are. We were also made to love and to seek justice. At a high level, humans know innately if something is wrong and we seek to right the wrong. But if we look to the wrong source of Truth to figure out how to right those wrongs; if we think human, conventional wisdom is the source of Truth, or when we seek things that our in our interests and not the interests of society at large, that’s when we begin fail. That’s when God allows us to fail so that we can see how stupid we’ve been.

And, when that happens, we begin to look outside ourselves, we begin to search for real Truth, and I believe this is the phenomena that we are seeing in our society today.

One thing I know for sure about Christianity is that it is counter cultural. What Jesus asks of his followers rubs against the grain of societal conventional wisdom. When Jesus says, “you cannot serve both God and mammon,” what he is saying is that the moment we put the desires of this world over the desire to do God’s will, that’s the moment we not only destroy ourselves but those we are entrusted to serve.

Jesus gave to us what the Church calls The Great Commission. To, “go and make disciples of all [people], baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that [was commanded by Him].” But Jesus isn’t just leaving it to us to determine how that should be done. He went on further and said, “And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” (Matt 28:16-20)

In other words, don’t think we are in this by ourselves or that we can somehow, by our own knowledge and power right the wrongs of our world. We must turn to Jesus. We must trust that in all things God is the source of all Truth.