From Archbishop Donoghue

Mass at the Donnellan School
November 7, 1997
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Dear Boy and Girls, and all my Friends in Christ,

Well it has been just about a year since I was last here - and even though I am getting older, I do remember some of the faces out here in front of me, and I am happy to see you again, and to know that you and your school are doing so well. You know that it is very important to me that the Catholic schools continue to do well - and it is very important not just to me, but to all of your Moms and Dads, your teachers, and everybody who is involved in our Church. I know that you are doing your best to study, and to learn everything that you need to know to be able to get along in the world, and I want you to keep working hard, to do what your teachers and parents want you to do, and I promise you that God will be good to you if you do these things. I can tell you that, because I am a Bishop, and those are the kind of things that I know.

The story of the Gospel this morning was really about this very thing - about how God is good to us, even when we are not so good. Do you remember how the story started - the rich man heard that his manager was not running the business very well, and naturally, he became upset - he called in the manager and said, "What have you been doing to my business - you are losing money - and I don't know what I am going to do with you!"

This of course upset the manager a lot, as well it might, and so he thought up a plan, to make things seem not so bad, so that his boss wouldn't be quite so mad with him, and maybe fire him from the job.

What he did was pretty clever, although I don't think it was really very honest. He called together all the people that owed his boss money, probably on account, just like we do nowadays, and he said to them, "You owe the boss ten dollars, but lets make the figure five instead; and to anther one he might have said, "You have a really bad debt with the boss - over a hundred dollars; let's cut it down to sixty dollars, so that it doesn't seem as bad." And so on, down the line, he gave everybody a break, but he did it to make things look like he wasn't such a bad manager after all.

Now, I think the boss probably knew what was going on, but apparently he was a man with a good nature, and so instead of getting madder about the whole thing, he went along with it, and gave everybody a break, and let the manger keep his job. We can only hope that after that, the manager did better the next time, and kept his business affairs in better shape.

Now what this story means is this: the Boss is God, and we are the manager. God gives us many gifts, many good things, but we do not always do the right thing with them. God gives us the ability to speak, for instance, but sometimes we say very bad things. And God gives us the ability to think, but sometimes we think things that we would never say out loud, they are so bad. And so forth and so on. But then, if we get caught doing something that isn't so good, we get very worried, and we try to figure a way for us to get out of the trouble we are in. Isn't this just like what the manager did, in the Gospel story? I think so.

The answer is to try and be totally honest from the start - to try and do only good things with the talents that God has given us - so that if we say something, we should think it out first, so that what we say is good, and will not hurt anybody else - or if we think something, we should try to make our thoughts good, so that they do not hurt us on the inside, and lead us into doing something that we don't really want to do, and that might be bad. That is what we should try to do.

Of course, we are only human though, and sometimes we are going to make mistakes just like the manager did. In that case, then the only thing to do is to go to God and ask Him to forgive us, and He will; and then go to the people we have hurt, and try to make it up with them. That is exactly what Jesus is teaching us in this story, and that is exactly what we should all try to do.

Dear boys and girls, I know that you believe in Jesus and I know that you want to do what He teaches us to do in the Gospel, and believe me, I see that you are learning these things in this fine school. But I want you to be sure and ask for help if you need it, help to understand what you are learning, or help to know what to do, in case you get yourself into a tight situation. We are all here to help one another - that's what Christianity is all about, and it's the only really good way to get along in the world. You try to do that, and believe me, all the rest will work out, and things will be the way you want them to be. God bless you all now, and keep you safe, and I look forward to the next time I can visit you again. And pray for me, in the meantime, because I can always use more prayers.

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