Some time ago I was invited to give a seminar for a theology week before an auditorium of faithful laymen. As the central theme, they suggested that I address the challenges of keeping one’s faith alive in the modern world.
These challenges are many of course, and as I don’t like to go over a topic unless I cover it thoroughly and with due solemnity, I opted for only two related trials: money and rebelliousness. As we all know, among the requirements of the evangelic faith, poverty and obedience are wholly included. I do not know of anyone, in two centuries of Christianity, who has allowed himself to be sanctified by the Holy Spirit without cultivating these virtues.
Contrarily, wherever a human heart clings to material wealth soon flourishes the black flowers of usury and ambition, of greed and violence. And wherever the human spirit is rooted in self-determination, pride and haughtiness quickly arise, the illusion of self-sufficiency. Human history as well as the history of the Church has recorded numerous examples of such disasters along the path of faith.
As the seminar came to a close, with some free time left over for questions and clarifications, one of the listeners, visibly constrained, asked permission to disagree. He did not see why anyone should be prohibited from amassing financial assets in this world. This was how he came forth after hearing citations from the Gospel of Jesus such as the well-known, “Truly, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven” and “Shame on the rich!” The fate of Epulon and the condition for the disciple, “If anyone wishes to follow me…”
I responded that the crux of the matter was not as much whether you accumulate material goods or not, but to ask oneself who could be helped with the sharing of these assets.
It’s been a few months now, but I still ask myself why a believer who wishes to follow Jesus Christ would consider asset accumulation to be so indispensable. A house, a car, savings, a plot of land, another house on the beach, one more investment here or there (you never know…), a second car with even more features and accessories, an apartment to rent out, and so on, insatiably…
With so many properties, the mind is kept occupied in administering and managing, surrounded by fences and electric fences, where is your fellow man left? Will he still be a brother? Or has he become a threat now?
Sweden is perhaps a sad example of society where the country’s administration has met all the nation’s material needs including jobs, education, health, medical care etc. As you know, the churches are all empty over there. My dear friend José Teixeira de Oliveira went to Sunday Mass in the Cathedral of Stockholm, celebrated by Mr. Bishop. There were six people present: the bishop, four faithful and my visiting friend. Sweden currently registers the second highest suicide rate in the world…
It seems that the rich have no need for God. But the poor do! Why? Well, the poor cannot pay off or pushover judges. The poor cannot afford good quality schools and hospitals. The poor have no resources or defenses. Thus, when religion is definitively forbidden and the Ten Commandments forgotten, the rich will go full steam ahead in their quest to steal from the poor their land, water, air, sunshine, women, children and the little donkey to boot.
Must be why the poor continue praying…
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