How does God look at you?

“And the master commended that dishonest steward for acting prudently” (Luke 16:8).

“If you fall asleep while praying, do not feel bad. Even if you do nothing else during this retreat but rest and have no great insight or no other prayer except, ‘Thank you, Lord, for giving me rest,’ you have already made a good retreat.” This is part of my usual “opening speech” when I facilitate three-day or five-day retreats.

To bolster my point, I have a ready anecdote to share. My former novice master, when he was still a novice himself, was assigned to be the beadle of his batch. One of his responsibilities was to make sure that when it was time for lights-out, all the lights were out. This task sometimes involved knocking on the door of a co-novice’s cubicle and telling him to sleep. Once, he saw that a table lamp in one cubicle was still turned on. As he was supposed to do, he knocked on the door and reminded the novice inside that it was time for bed. There was no response, and the lamp remained lit. As he was allowed to do, he entered the novice’s cubicle and saw the novice hunched over his desk, already asleep. Shaking his head and a bit annoyed, my novice master reached across the desk to turn off the light. But something in the snoring novice’s hand caught his eye. It was a rosary. From the way it was being held, the novice must have fallen asleep three Hail Marys into the first decade. If I were the beadle then, I would have gotten more annoyed and perhaps, with seething sanctimoniousness, judged the poor novice: “You will never be a priest if you cannot even stay awake to finish your nightly devotion to our Lady.” But my novice master was and will always be a kinder person than I. From shaking his head, my novice master found himself nodding in approval. His co-novice must have been really tired, but still he tried to pray. When my novice master told us this story, his point was that if he, an all too judgmental and all too critical human being, could glimpse a glimmer of goodness behind a failed attempt, what goodness the all-knowing and all-loving Father must have seen.

I told this story to a group of catechists starting a retreat, and I remember the most senior of them, a pious grandmother, approaching me after and saying, “You don’t know how much that story meant to me. In my old age, I cannot finish the rosary without falling asleep. Waking up and seeing the rosary dangling in my hand, I am so ashamed I want to use the rosary to flagellate myself. I have always thought that God must be so disappointed in me. But maybe, he is not.”

Last week, I was in the confessional, and a man came in breathing heavily, as if he was burdened with the weight of the world. “I was just here three days ago, Father. And I screwed up again. I’m so embarrassed about what I have done. I don’t even know how to begin telling you my sins.” I told him, “You won’t be telling just me. You will actually be telling God. But even before the words form on your lips, he already knows what you are going to say. And he is already welcoming you back with an embrace. He is embracing you right now. Proof: You are here in this confessional. Do you think you would have made it here on your own?” I am not sure if the man believed me, but he started his confession, and all I could think of while he was enumerating his sins was: “This is a holy man, and he does not even know it.” If I, an all-too-judgmental and all too critical human being, could glimpse the goodness of this man, I wonder what the all-knowing and all-loving Father was seeing.

Last week, we heard of a son who “squandered his inheritance on a life of dissipation” (Luke 15:13). Today, we hear of a steward who was reported to his master for “squandering his [lord’s] property” (Luke 16:1). To the squandering they suffered through, how did the father in last Sunday’s parable and the rich man in our Gospel today respond? The father had the fattened calf killed and threw a feast for the errant son. The rich man ended up praising his corrupt steward.

We, too, squander our talents, our gifts, and our blessings. We waste our inheritance. We betray the Lord’s trust. How does God respond? I am certain that God disapproves, but like the father of the prodigal son, he continues to wait at the door and cranes his neck for any sign of our return. Like the rich man, he still finds something good in us.

Imagine God looking at you right now. He sees all your shortcomings; he sees all your weaknesses. But he also sees something more. He sees his child. Imagine God looking at you and smiling. You know how he has responded and how he will respond to your squandering. How will you respond to him in return?