The religious live in a community, for this reason a religious order may even be rich but its members poor; because they don’t profit from that wealth. The parish priests live alone, some are even poorer than the religious brothers but there are others who have amassed great wealth, resulting in disagreements among the nephews as they fight over who is to eventually inherit it. Because of this it is jokingly said: "To whom God does not give children, the devil gives nephews".
Primum vivere, deinde philsophari (To live comes first, then philosophize)
Some, concerned with high philosophies, forget that they have to work to sustain the basic necessities of their existence. To this St. Paul said, "Anyone unwilling to work should not eat" (2 Th.3:10). It is work that generates the income that allows them to maintain the vital functions, or to stay alive.
“In truth, for those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it” (Mk 8:35). To live and to stay alive are the one and the same for animals, but not so for humans. It is true that to live it is necessary to be alive, but the meaning and the purpose of a human life are certainly not just to stay alive.
On the contrary, you don’t live life by keeping it but by giving it up day by day or at once for something, a good cause, or someone. In this the gospel is clear; you lose what you retain and gain what you give away. Living is using up all one’s time, energy and resources in pursue of a dream, an ideal, an ambition that has to do with a noble cause. In this regards my life is of absolute value to others but of comparative value to myself. The good cause to which I devote my life is the absolute not life itself.
Material goods, therefore, have nothing to do with life but only with staying alive, to maintain the vital functions. Whoever dedicates his entire life to amassing wealth, which is only a means of life, is not really living it; he is simply preserving what eventually he will lose as he has no power to preserve it indefinitely. He may well arrive at the point of possessing enough wealth to afford to live not only one but two or three lives. But, like everybody else he has just one and one that was not well lived but foolishly wasted. Those who live their lives as if they are never going to die will end up dying as if they had never lived…
Psychoanalysis of Ownership
When we read the popular tales that speak of money turned into feces, and vice versa -- according to Freud -- it is only a reference as to how the concept of possessing money or other goods, first originated in our psyche.
In the narcissistic phase of development, feces are very important to a child, for the simple reason that they came out -- or originated --from his own body; this also reflects the elevated value or esteem the child places on himself. The mother reinforces this characteristic when she becomes overly concerned with the child during episodes of constipation. When finally, the child has a bowel movement, he shows and exhibits with pride the feces to his mother who becomes overjoyed.
According to Freud, when the child, after a bowel movement, contemplates his highly regarded feces, that came out of him, he feels that he has lost something of value that belonged to him which should have stayed inside; realizing that he is unable to put them back, he declares them his which essentially or symbolically means he wants to incorporate and return them into himself.
As it is said, from the point of view of psychoanalyses, the love of material goods has its roots in the narcissistic phase, or the anal phase, of a child's development. In this phase, the child is predominantly egocentric; he hasn't developed the capacity to feel affection for others, not even the capacity to love or to hate which are realities that belong to the next phase of development, the genital phase.
Possessors or possessed?
“If riches increases, do not set your heart on them” (Ps. 62:10).
“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Lk. 12:34).
Unfortunately the rich young man in the gospel of Matthew (19:16-23) decided to keep his riches when Jesus invited him to choose between material wealth and spiritual wealth. The gospel says that he became sad in face of his own decision; material wealth can be a source of pleasure which is followed by sadness most of the times. On the contrary, spiritual wealth is always a source of joy; a joy that springs up from the inside, like the water Jesus offered to the Samaritan woman, and becomes everlasting.
The rich young man refused to follow the master at the prospect of losing his wealth, his false sense of security paralyzed him. To follow the master was what motivated him to approach Jesus in the first place, but his riches got hold of him and would not let him go. He was not the master of his own destiny; he was not able to give himself up and follow Jesus, because he was already taken, or possessed by the things he thought he possessed.
What happened to the rich young man happens to all who give their hearts to wealth, it is like selling one's soul to the devil. From that moment onwards, possessing becomes an illusion since we only possess in accounting terms because psychologically as well as spiritually we are possessed. In financial terms we may have a large bank account but as soon as we give our hearts to that money and start loving it, then the psychological and spiritual realities show that the bank account has us.
If the object of love is the material goods, then a strange symbiosis occurs, between the person and the material goods that he loves. Symbiosis is defined as a relationship of mutual benefit and dependency between two living organisms. There is a trade off or sharing between the two; the material goods share the matter, so the person who loves material goods becomes materialized; the person shares his spirit, so the material goods become in a way spiritualized. The love of wealth turns a person into matter and matter into a person; so the subject who previously was said to own has now become owned.
Money is a good slave as it can be used to do lots of things, but a bad master because it may enslave you if you let yourself be seduced by it. When and if that happens, from that time on, it is the wealth that controls your life and not the other way around. Since material goods only keep us alive, those who spend most of their time and energy looking for them live just to stay alive, and that is a tautology.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC
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