CATHOLIC ENLIGHTENMENT NEW OUTREACH PROGRAM

In this article, we will be discussing wealth and finances.

A lot of people are eager and interested in learning how to make money, and we can see that in the number of people that subscribe to money-making schemes such as Ponzi’s, networking businesses, and others. For some people, they have reached the point where they are ready and willing to do anything, including engaging in occult practices or illegitimate businesses, just so that they can level up with their peers. Is this what God wants for us?

Many of us grew up knowing this scripture like the back of our palm: “For the love of money is the root of all evils; it is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith.” We were thought not to love money, and so many were underequipped with the right information on the godly ways of wealth acquisition and usage.

Just like an individual who has been locked up in a room craves fresh air and desires to be everywhere when they gain freedom, people tend to want more and more once they see money, and for those that are yet to acquire wealth, they fantasize about the many different things they would do when they eventually make some money.

Saint John Chrysostom says: There is harm not only in trying to gain wealth but also in excessive concern with even the most necessary things. It is not enough to despise wealth; you must also feed the poor and, more importantly, follow Christ.

Have you ever wondered why wealth acquisition and the act of giving are tied together in sacred scripture? Let’s examine what Archbishop Fulton Sheen says about wealth in his book, The Ways to Happiness. He says that in the past, men talked less about ‘living their lives’’ and more about saving their souls. They did not place as much emphasis on economic matters, but they took far more interest in moral and religious things. Now, since the attraction of heaven has lessened for many men, their attachment to the earth has intensified. The quest for God has given way to the quest for wealth and power. The idol of our century is not the saint, but the man who has won through to “the top.”

According to St. Ignatius, “people find themselves tempted to covet whatever seems to make them rich, and because they possess some thing or things, they find themselves pursuing and basking in the honor and esteem of the world. This raises the false sense of personal identity and value in which blinding pride has its roots.

There are two extreme attitudes that confront the modern mind as it revolves around the question of how much importance it should attach to the standard of worldly success. Should such a thing be worshipped and sought after as the greatest good in life? Should it, on the other hand, be condemned as vicious in itself? The ambitious men of our century adopted the first extreme attitude. Borrowing from the words of St. Thomas Aquinas, what we want at the end of the day is true happiness, but then we seek money to get happiness. Since our happiness cannot lie in artificial or natural wealth, it is impossible for happiness—our final end—to consist in wealth.

Taking a look at the life of our Lord Jesus Christ as it is represented in the Holy Bible, the Gospels show that power and wealth are legitimate ambitions and ideals, but with certain safeguards that the modern world usually ignores. These safeguards are revealed to us in the hidden life of Our Lord in Nazareth, and they are two: No man has a right to power until he has learned obedience, as Christ was obedient to His parents. And no man may safely possess wealth until he has learned to be detached from it, as Our Lord was when He chose for His early vocation that of a poor village carpenter.

Our Lord teaches us that no one is entitled to wealth until he has learned to be detached from it. The Nazareth years are not intended to glorify poverty in our eyes or to preach endurance of hardship and hunger for themselves. Our Lord was poor. He worked hard to earn the bare necessities of life. He was a needy carpenter. But He was a rich God who owned the universe, and He was a God of Power who had made Himself powerless. Wealth and power are not, in and of themselves, evil, for both of them belong to God.

In the same way, no one has the right to despise the rich until, like Our Lord, he has proven himself free from the passion to possess, and then he will not wish to despise anyone.

The poverty of Nazareth was neither a condemnation of wealth nor a glorification of poverty; it was an illustration of the beautiful doctrine of detachment. Christ’s followers, too, even though their possessions might amount only to a few fishing boats and tangled nets and the greater gift of their free wills, Our Lord never tried to induce the poor to accept poverty as a good or misery as a thing to be sought for itself. He glorified neither the poor man nor the rich man. But the one He did praise was the poor man who, having once been rich, had willingly made himself poor—the poor man who, by detaching himself from everything, became possessed of everything—the man who, wanting nothing, owned all things. Our Lord does not endorse the giving up of wealth in favor of a vacuum; He approves, rather, of giving wealth in exchange for the far greater riches of heaven. He did not tell us, ”Blessed are the poor,” or “Blessed are the rich.” But He told us, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” German Diarist Anne Frank would say, Human greatness does not lie in wealth or power, but in character and goodness.

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