Arise and Walk

Love for the riches makes us blind to supernatural realities. No wonder affluent societies are becoming irreligious, though it need not be so. The worship of God is replaced with the worship of money. While the body is adored and adorned, the soul is empty and filthy.

Everywhere there is an unbridled frenzy to amass wealth and aggrandize oneself. We often gauge success in life by one’s assets, lifestyle and level of comfort. According to Cardinal Newman, “wealth is that to which the multitude of men pay an instinctive homage…and by wealth they measure respectability.” The rich who wield power and influence are viewed as demigods by those who think that money is everything. They are the kind of individuals who would compromise honor in favor of material gains, fair-weather friends who are opportunists in every possible way.

We all experience the pressure to acquire more. Media splash the lure of the latest in the market, whetting our appetite to eat more, buy more, rest more, and indulge more in anything presented as delightful by our concupiscence. And we bite the bait without pondering on its moral cost. How can we react properly if we hardly remember that we have a soul? Our whims connive with a rotten world to enslave us and reduce our life into misery, perhaps adored by men and women but despised by God.

We are wont to create false needs. We are anxious until we get what we want. But our contentment is only short-lived, for we will look for more. We will try to acquire the finest products, the cutting edge gadgets, and the most popular brands. We collect trinkets and hanker for watches, wallets, jewelries, CDs, DVDs, iPods, mobile phones, computers, and cars. We grudgingly admire or resent the prosperity of others. We love things and use people, inverting the logic of God, who rather wants us to use things and love our neighbor.

When the heart clings to objects, it loses its taste for the sublime and it gives in to sadness because we will always want more but will always fall short of our ambition. Nothing in the world can satiate our heart, since it is made for no less than God.

All of us will have to let go of everything on our deathbed because then only one thing truly matters – the state of our soul. Material goods lose their appeal. Our past life flashes back to our mind in an instant, the silly things we have done, the time we have wasted, the harm we have caused. If we could only undo the past, we would follow a different path; we would spend our life storing up treasures in heaven. We should have known better. We should have acted more wisely. Now there is only one thing we can do – make an act of contrition and commend ourselves to the mercy of God.

“Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or, ‘What shall we drink’ or, ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek all these things; and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.” (Mt 6:31-34).

We are not being asked to literally give up everything, fling our money, strip ourselves, put on a mantle, and beg for alms in the manner of St. Francis of Assisi. It takes a very specific divine vocation to do that. But Our Lord wants the great majority of men and women to live the demands of the Gospel in the humdrums of daily life, that is, in the hustle and bustle of the markets, city streets, workplaces, schools and homes. When we truly live temperance we will practice the spirit of poverty wherever we are and in whatever situation we may find ourselves, exuding the bonus odor Christi (the good odor of Christ) through our good Christian example.

We are truly poor in spirit if we consider ourselves as steward, rather than the absolute owner, of whatever we possess. The best antidote to avarice is spirit of detachment shown in living a simple and sober life, as well as being generous with others, especially the needy. It does us a lot of good to practice voluntary austerity.

The world and every good thing we find in it comes from the hands of God. They are all His. Yet Jesus’ life on earth was anything but luxurious and ostentatious. On the contrary, he was born in a stable, he employed himself in manual labor, he was stripped even of the clothes he wore, and when he was leaving this world, the only thing he was made to grab on was a wooden Cross, to which he was fastened with nails. Truly Our Lord “was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich” (2 Cor 8:9).