Katiwala (Matthew 21: 33-43, 45-46)

A few months ago, I wrote an entry I entitled Katiwala (caretaker). And after writing that entry, I realized the importance of today's Gospel passage.

So first let me reproduce my old entry here:


When I run out of ideas on what to post, one of the sites I refer to is www.mass-schedules.com, which, despite its generic name, is a website for the Philippine mass schedules.


The site's reflection for the day (which will disappear tomorrow) says this: "Jesus' story about a businessman who leaves town and entrusts his money with his workers made perfect sense to his audience. Wealthy merchants and businessmen often had to travel abroad and leave the business to others to handle while they were gone". 


I'll run off on a tangent from there. While the concept of "stewardship" is not new, I think the Filipino translation is more descriptive of our place relative to things: tayo'y katiwala. Katiwala evokes images of people allowed  by owners to live for free in houses that are otherwise not occupied or people in rural areas allowed by owners of land to live on and plant in that land. I'm not all that comfortable with the concept of stewardship because it denotes a certain level of co-equality with the owner and not enough of servanthood and accountability. 


The word katiwala makes it clear that we are servants and clearly not the owners of various stuff. Nothing is ours. If you believe Kahlil Gibran, even our children are not ours. Pinagkatiwala lang sila sa atin. (They were just entrusted to us)


The question then becomes what do we do with the things and people entrusted to us. Mapagkakatiwalaan ba tayo? (Can we be trusted?) And when the owner comes back, what do we as katiwala have to show for it? 


The Gospel for today is all about katiwala. A landowner goes on a journey and asks his tenants to take care of the land. When harvest time drew near, the landowner sent servants to obtain his produce but the tenants beat these servants to death. He sent a second batch but they were treated the same way. Finally, he sends his son and the tenants still kill his son.

I think the tenants forgot that the land and its produce was not theirs but that they were merely stewards of the landowner's land.

I don't think the Gospel for today should just be directed to people who are like the Pharisees and the chief priests but applies to all of us who sometimes forget that we are merely katiwala, that everything is gift freely given by God to us and we must remain openhearted enough to surrender what is asked for when it is asked for.