Health, money and love
And whoever possesses these three things
May he give thanks to God!
Gigliola Cinquetti
These are the essential goods of human life, in this order. The first two keep us alive, and the third gives value and meaning to our life. It goes without saying that the first two are less important for human life than the third one, and we could say that, in some way, we have them in common with animals. However, to live humanly and with meaning we have to be alive first. That is why we cannot live without health and money. As the proverb says, a living donkey is worth more than a dead wise man.
Famine – pestilence – war
If happiness and well-being can be denoted by a triad composed of health – money – love, then unhappiness and malaise could be described by the counter triad of famine – pestilence – war. Famine is the lack of money or resources to maintain physical life to sustain life; pestilence is the lack of health at a large scale like the Black Death in the Middle Ages, and the AIDS, Ebola, SARS and Covid-19 epidemic or pandemic in our times; war is the lack of love and the action of hate at a large scale.
HEALTH
Jesus did not come into the world just to save man, in the sense of opening the doors to paradise of eternal life. Jesus lived his earthly life caring for mankind in its totality, and much of his ministry was spent healing all kinds of sickness, both serious and not so serious. Therefore, when we say that Jesus is our salvation, we should not only think of eternal salvation, but also of earthly salvation. In fact, the Latin word salus, means more than salvation, it means health. Jesus is our health, our well-being, our happiness.
In the industrialized West, 70% of deaths occur by heart attacks, strokes and cancer. These three diseases have practically the same causes: genetic predisposition, the air we breathe, what we eat and drink, and our lifestyle (active or sedentary).
Cancer is the second cause of death in the Western world, after cardiovascular diseases. There is nothing mysterious about cardiovascular diseases; we know practically everything about them, therefore we exercise certain control over them. We know more or less what to do to avoid and to cure them.
Cancer, on the other hand, is radically different and complex; it is not confined to one part of our body, it can develop in any organ – stomach, intestines, kidneys, lungs, pancreas, prostates, ovaries, uterus etc. – or tissues – bone, skin – or body fluids – blood and lymph. After many years of research and accumulating knowledge on this group of disease, what we know is still little, or at least not enough to cure it or prevent it.
There is no one in the Western world who is not in some way haunted by cancer, because no one is free from it. Having no family history and leading a healthy lifestyle help a lot, but still, there is no guarantee that this disease will not pay us a visit in our lifetime.
Physical health
Putting aside inherited genetic determinants, physical health is largely our responsibility. In our youth, we take health for granted and our bodies can even endure some abuse; but as we age, abuse is less and less tolerated. Only those who work at staying healthy are healthy. As someone has said, God always forgives, some men forgive and others do not, but nature neither forgives nor forgets, and sooner or later, we will pay for whatever we have done against it: this is the boomerang effect.
Diet
In medio virtus – It is the principle to observe with food, by having a balanced diet; since there are many different nutrients our body needs and there is not one specific food that has them all, we should eat a little of everything. We are not what we eat, contrary to what they say, but much of what we are comes from what we eat. A balanced diet has to have the following in this order: water, carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins, fibers and minerals.
We should also eat less than our appetite craves, that is, avoid eating to the point of having our stomach stuffed to the brim; we should get up from the table with still some appetite left. Those who eat until they are full tend to gain weight and run the risk of becoming overweight/obese which in itself is a problem with harmful health consequences.
Meals should be spaced to give the stomach some time to rest with periods of fasting. It makes sense, the slogan that says, “Have breakfast like a king, have lunch like a prince, and dine like a beggar”. Modern society does precisely the opposite: many leave for work without breakfast because they have not yet digested or absorbed the previous night’s dinner or supper. The person who does not eat breakfast has low blood sugar. This leads to an insufficient amount of nutrients going to the brain, causing its gradual degeneration.
Drinking one cup of warm water, with or without lemon, half an hour before breakfast is highly recommended to cleanse the kidneys, as the first urine after waking up in the morning is highly concentrated with toxins. Throughout the day, outside mealtimes, one should drink up to one and a half liters of water, because all our bodily functions need water, all is done with it, in it and by it.
Breakfast or lunch should be the most important meal of the day. Breakfast should consist of cereals to provide a steady supply of energy for the rest of the day. These cereals must be as whole as possible for two reasons: first, the husk contains a lot of nutrients and without it, only the starch is left, and second, refined cereals are easily broken down by our body with the resulting glucose elevating the blood sugar level rapidly and exponentially. If the cereal is whole grain, the absorption of carbohydrates is slower and more gradual, providing a steady source of energy for the rest of the day.
Fruit should be eaten outside meals, because it is mostly digested and absorbed in the small intestine. If it is eaten after meals, it is wasted and does not get digested properly. If possible, eliminate all processed meats like sausages, hot dogs and cold cuts. Preferably, lean meat should be consumed because it contains less cholesterol, and meat from older grass-fed animals as it contains less purines and uric acid. Fish should be fatty, as it contains HDL, and young, as it contains less mercury; schooling fish is preferable to the big ones because latter are usually much older.
Sleep
Sleep allows the brain to rest and archive its affairs. Lack of sleep for prolonged periods accelerate the loss of brain cells. However, sleep is not only essential for the brain but also for the rest of the body.
21h00 – 23h00: It is the time the body performs activities to eliminate unnecessary and toxic chemicals (detoxification) through the lymphatic system of our body. At this time of night, we should be in a state of relaxation, listening to music for example.
23h00 – 01h00: The body carries out gallbladder detoxification process, which should ideally happen in the state of deep sleep.
00h00 – 04h00: It is the time when bone marrow manufactures blood cells.
01h00 – 03h00: During the first hours of the new day, liver detoxification process takes place, ideally in the state of deep sleep.
03h00 – 05h00: At dawn, lungs detoxify. This is why sometimes at this time strong coughing fits occur. When the process of detoxification reaches the respiratory tract, it is better not to take cough medicines as they interfere with the process of toxin elimination.
05h00 – 07h00: It is the time for colon detoxification. It is the time to go to the bathroom to empty the bowels.
Sleeping late and waking up late will disrupt the process of detoxification and elimination of harmful chemicals from the body.
Physical exercise
A sedentary lifestyle is the mother of all illnesses, while moderate non-competitive exercise is one of the few things without bad side effects and is good for everything. The muscle that needs to be exercised the most is the heart; for this, the best exercise is running and for those who cannot run because of some complication in their legs or knees, can replace it with swimming or cycling. The benefits of regular moderate exercise are as follow:
• Helps to decrease and control body weight.
• Decreases the risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, osteoporosis, diabetes and obesity.
• Improves blood cholesterol levels.
• Increases the level of cholesterol (HDL), decreases the levels of cholesterol (LDL) and triglycerides.
• Increases muscle endurance.
• Tendons and ligaments become more flexible.
• Promotes mental well-being and helps to treat depression.
• Relieves stress and anxiety, and fights insomnia.
• Helps in the production of serotonin, the wellness hormone.
Psychical and emotional health
Transmissible diseases are commonly transmitted by contact or contagion. Our body and our psyche are intimately connected; for this reason, it is unthinkable that when one is sick that the other does not also become sick. Today we know more than ever that many diseases that start in the physical sphere end up affecting the psychical one as well, and vice versa.
I transcribe here information that I found at a health centre; I do not know to what extent it is all true, but it is based on the principle that the psychical health does influence the physical health.
• Constipation occurs when the body does not cry.
• The throat tightens up when it is not possible to communicate afflictions.
• The stomach burns when anger cannot find expression, when it cannot come out.
• Diabetes invades when loneliness hurts.
• The body gets fat when emotional dissatisfaction suffocates.
• Headache depresses when doubts grow.
• The heart gives up when the meaning of life seems to end.
• Allergy appears when perfectionism becomes intolerable.
• Nails break when defences are threatened.
• The chest tightens when pride enslaves.
• The heart rages in face of ingratitude.
• Tension rises when fear imprisons, and anger interiorizes.
• Neuroses paralyze when “inner child” tyrannizes.
The planting or sowing is free, but harvesting is mandatory, in the sense that those who sow, winds are bound to reap storms. Therefore, our health depends to a great extent on us.
If it is true that our psychology affects our body, the opposite is also true: our physique affects our psychology. An example of this is the fact that our body posture can stimulate production of testosterone, a very important hormone for the maintenance of general health. With aging, the production of this hormone decreases exponentially, complicating health in general, especially in men.
The production of this hormone, however, can increase by 20% if we assume positions of physical power: open and stretch arms and legs, use more space, and stay in one of these positions for two minutes. At the same time, cortisol, the body’s main stress hormone, decreases by 25%.
MONEY
- Rabbi, what is your view concerning money? – the disciple asked his teacher.
- Look out the window, - said the teacher – What do you see?
- I see a woman with a child, a cart pulled by two horses and a man heading to the market.
- Good. Now look at the mirror, what do you see?
- What do you want me to see, teacher? I see myself, of course.
- Consider this then: the window is made of glass, so is the mirror. A thin silver coating behind the glass is enough to make a man see only himself.
When silver (money, material goods) comes between us and others, we stop seeing them and only see ourselves. It is true that all human activities involve money. Therefore, money in itself is important, considering that we have a body to feed and clothe. The general rule is that money is essential to keep the body living, that is, to keep us alive; as for the rest, money does not give.
In medieval times when a new student was interviewed for admission to the old university in Salamanca, (Spain), he was asked several questions, such as, was he in good health, was he from a good family, etc. The fifth question was in Latin, “Habeas pecunia?”, that is, “Do you have money?” From this came the Spanish expression, “I am on the fifth question”, which means I have no money, and without this, I cannot study.
Your purse or your life?
“Your purse or your life” is the dilemma that a thief confronts us with. The sensible ones give up the purse and retain life; the foolish ones in defending the purse lose their life. This happens not only at the level of theft, but also at an existential level. Wealth is a means of life, not an end in itself; those who use wealth for life are sensible; those who sacrifice or use their life to get more wealth or livelihood are foolish. It does not dawn earlier just because you wake up earlier, says a Spanish proverb, that is, it is not by having more means of living that one gets more life or that one lives longer and is happier.
“Saving for a year to spend it all in one day”
It is an expression that I’ve heard many times from my father. He worked hard, and both he and my mother saved a lot. However, when an occasion came when it was necessary to spend, such as a wedding, he did not cling to his money like many savers, but spent whatever he had to spend.
This is, in my opinion, the best relationship that one can have with money, keeping it as a servant, as something useful for many things. On the other hand, if you save when you should be spending, you raise money to the status of Lord; money starts to have value on its own, and powers over you.
Whoever loves wealth does not possess but is possessed
May the Spirit of God be with you so that you can see that all things are good, but woe to you if you love the creatures, abandoning the Creator! – Francisco Benzoni
If riches increase, do not set your heart on them. Psalm 62:10
For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Luke 12:34
Things are made to be used, not loved. People, on the other hand, are made to be loved. Since we cannot serve two masters, if we transfer our love to wealth, we then see others as rivals and cannot love them; we end up instead looking for ways to use them to make ourselves richer.
Unfortunately, the rich young man from the Gospel of St. Matthew (19:16-23) decided to keep the riches when Jesus confronted him and gave him the choice between material wealth and spiritual wealth. The Gospel says that he was saddened by his own choice; wealth can give pleasure, but it does not give joy and the pleasure is almost always followed by sadness.
The rich young man refused to follow the teacher because with the prospect of losing his wealth, his false sense of security paralyzed him. Following the teacher was what moved him to go to Jesus in the first place, but he could not carry it through. What stopped him was not because he possessed many riches, but because he was possessed by them. He was not free, he was not the master of his own destiny. What happened to the rich young man, which happens to anyone who gives his heart to riches, is that he sold his soul to the devil.
Where your treasure is, there your heart is, warns the Gospel. Therefore, when we give our heart to wealth, we sell our soul to the devil; from that moment onwards, we possess it only from an accounting standpoint, because from a psychological and spiritual point of view, we are the ones possessed, similar to being under a demonic possession.
If the objects of love are the material goods, then a strange symbiosis occurs between the person and the material good that he loves. Symbiosis is defined as a relationship of mutual benefit and dependence between two living beings. There is an exchange or sharing between the two: the material goods share their matter, through which the person who loves them becomes materialized; the person shares his spirit, through which the material goods become spiritualized. The person who previously said he possessed the goods, becomes possessed. It was not the rich young man who possessed the material goods, it was the material goods that possessed the rich young man.
Money is a good slave, but a wicked, vicious and overpowering master. Therefore, he who is seduced by wealth, loses his freedom. In reality, it is wealth that starts to “command” his life and not him. When the sole purpose in life is to possess, and possessing serves only to maintain vital functions, the person then lives only to stay alive, that is, he vegetates.
From the material or practical, and economic or financial point of view, I own the riches; from the psychological or spiritual point of view, they, the riches, own me. In loving things, man loses his freedom, he materializes. Since his heart is not made to love things, but people and God, in loving things he becomes a bottomless pit who never has enough. Consequently, sooner or later, he will upset others, as he tends to accumulate much more than is needed for his daily bread. What he accumulates in excess, others begin to lack and see as an injustice, and before one knows it, the situation degenerates into violence.
Money does not buy life’s essentials
The truth is that money, far from buying everything, does not buy even the most important things, what we really need in life. That is why it is not difficult to find depressed and unhappy people among the rich, and happy and fulfilled people among the poor.
Money can buy a bed, but it cannot buy sleep; it can buy food, but not appetite; it can buy books, but not intelligence; it can by luxury, but not beauty; it can buy a house, but not a home, medications but not health, social gatherings but not love, entertainment or fun but not happiness, a crucifix but not faith, a luxurious plot in the cemetery but not heaven.
There is nothing more valuable than life, and life is a gift from God; love, which is the beginning of life, is free and cannot be bought or sold. In essence, only material means, essential to be alive, are bought but not life, it is not bought, nor sold, nor possessed.
Only God possesses
(…) guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions. Luke 12:15
We came from God into this life with nothing and with nothing we will go back to Him. We are not owners of anything, because we cannot possess anything indefinitely, not even our own life.
“I want to spend a night in this caravan shelter,” said one pilgrim. “How dare you call my sumptuous vast palace a caravan shelter?” said the king. “And whose palace was it before it was yours?” asked the pilgrim. “It was my father’s.” “And before that, who did it belong to?” continued the pilgrim. “My grandfather’s,” said the king. “Then,” concluded the pilgrim, “A building that passes from hand to hand what is that if not a caravan shelter?”
Working for money is like being a slave
For we hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work. Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. 2 Thessalonians 3:11-12
It is true that we must work for our livelihood, but if the only reason for our work is to earn money to support ourselves, then we are no better than a donkey that also has to work to be fed, or a slave of the past who worked from sunrise to sunset in order to have the assured food.
It is true that we need a salary, but the main reason for our work should not be money, but the satisfaction of creating new things. Our work is slavery if done just to make money, and an art if we like what we do. Therefore, every hobby is a job, and every job should be a hobby.
A doctor or a teacher who does his work only for money, is never a good professional, and certainly no one wants a lover of money for a doctor or a teacher. What we do best in life is what we do for love: this should be the first motivation of our work, not money or duty, but love.
This does not apply only to doctors or teachers, but also to carpenters, masons, blacksmiths, architects etc. or any other profession. If the worker does not like what he does, he will not do it well and if money is his only motivation, then it will cost him to do what he does. On the other hand, what he does for love, he will always try to do better, going beyond himself without ever getting tired; as the proverb says, whoever loves to run never tires.
LOVE
One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, ‘Which commandment is the first of all?’ Jesus answered, ‘The first is, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” The second is this, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these.’ Mark 12:28-31
Human love may satisfy human beings somewhat, but it does not satisfy them fully. Saint Augustine said, “You have made us, Lord, for yourself and our hearts are restless until they rest in you”. So many have discovered that, and they have even given up human love to be alone with the divine love.
Princess Diana of Wales had everything a young woman could ask for in life: youth, beauty, power, money, fame, “blue blood” and two precious sons, and yet she was not happy because she lacked the main thing that money cannot buy: love.
In search of this one thing money and social position cannot buy, she abandoned everything and it was in this search that she lost her life. There are others who having the essential, love, do the opposite, eagerly seeking all that the princess despised, wasting their lives on this pursuit, often ending up losing what they already had, love.
Like Diana of Wales, Saint Benedict of Nursia, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Saint Francis of Xavier, Saint Anthony of Lisbon, Saint Isabel of Portugal, Saint Nuno Alvares Pereira, Saint Beatrice da Silva etc., the saints of the Catholic Church, were for the most part from upper middle class, educated, young, beautiful, rich, some of royal blood, but they, on the other hand, abandoned everything for Christ, just as Saint Paul had done: For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ, Philippians 3:8.
Story of John
To love and to be loved is the first human need. We were born from the love between our father and mother, and it is their love for us that made us grow healthy, both in body and soul. Whoever is not loved unconditionally as a child, late or never will they become fully human.
John was seven years old when he was abandoned by his father; his mother stayed single for a while, but ended up remarrying, and John was sent off to his grandmother’s house. Feeling rejected, he stopped studying, began to behave badly in school, and became violent with his peers and teachers. Since his grandmother could not handle him and his mother, giving in to the demands of her new husband, did not want him in her house, the Social Security Department put John in a foster home.
While in the foster home, John lived in the hope of spending the weekends with his family; the father didn’t keep his promises and the mother always made lame excuses. Unlike many other foster children, John spent his weekends and holidays in the foster home.
With this, in addition to his previous bad behaviour, he got involved in house burglaries, car theft and started to take and sell drugs. When the foster home could no longer cope with him, John ended up in a correctional institution as an inmate.
John now has a doctor, a nurse, a psychiatrist and a social assistant at his disposal. Together they tried to cure and reintegrate him and many others like him back into the society. The success rate is very low; many boys and girls never recover.
In foster homes and correctional centers, and in professional and sophisticated therapies, the State spends, almost without any success, millions of euros when all John and others like him needed is the unconditional love of a mother and a father, however ignorant they could have been in education.
The unconditional love of two parents would certainly be more successful than all the trained professionals with their sophisticated therapies. If John could have had this unconditional love from his parents, he would not have ended up where he was and would not have needed all those professionals.
The professionals could even have loved John unconditionally; more likely than not, however, is that John would reject this love. From my own experience, during a period of my childhood when I thought my mother did not love me, I was very much loved by a teacher. However, I rejected her love, I remember it so well, because it was not her love that I wanted to receive.
With an actual divorce rate of 70%, in Portugal, how many little kids like John will we have in our society? Those who are not loved unconditionally spend the rest of their lives looking for love, when in adulthood the priority should be to love.
Adults who look for love
Like we have said, to love and to be loved is the basic need of human beings. Without love there is no human life, loving and living are synonymous because only love fills us to the brim and fully satisfies us. More important than to know why we live, which only satisfies our mind, is to know for whom we live because this satisfies both our heart and soul.
Like the Bible says, there is a time for everything. I would say that fundamentally there is a time to love and a time to be loved. At all stages of our lives, we need to love and to be loved; however, during childhood, this is the time when it is essential to be loved, because we do not yet know how to love.
A child, as we have said, cannot do without love. But an adult can do without love because for him the main thing is no longer (or should not be) to be loved. If he is a mature adult, the main thing, the most urgent, thing should be to love.
The main and most important thing for an adult is to love. I like to state this by looking at most adult of all the adults, at the model of humanity that is Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus did not spend his life looking for someone to love him, but for someone to love. He could very well do without the love of men, and in fact it did happen many times. But he also did not feel self-sufficient and he welcomed all the love that some people gave him, among them his male and female disciples.
However, he didn’t beg for love, didn’t go around the world begging for love, as we see today so many adults, single, divorced or unhappily married looking for someone to love them. How sad it is to see a soap opera and the things that these adults do to get or retain love. We see the same in the lyrics of many romantic songs: very few sing of love they want to give, most sing about love they want to receive.
Other factors of success
It is told about a woman found three venerable gentlemen at her door; when she invited them to come in, they told her that only one of them could enter and that the choice was hers. One said that he was called wealth, the other love and the third success.
In consultation with her family, some said success, others wealth, but at the end they all agreed that she should invite love. She went to the door and informed that she was inviting love; at that moment, she saw that three were getting ready to enter. She said, “I only invited love, why then do all of you want to come in now?” While love entered the house, the other two answered the woman saying, “Where he goes, we also go.”
Love is in fact the Philosopher’s Stone that transforms everything into gold. Where there is love, everything else comes in addition; where there is no love, neither success nor wealth is kept for long.
In this passion to find tridimensional realities, here are other factors that help us to succeed in life; about each triad I could write an article, but since I won’t have the time or the space to do it, I have made a list…
3 least reliable things in the world: power – luck – prosperity
3 things one should not lose: patience – hope – dignity
3 most valuable things: love – principles – trust
3 things that give a person worth: sincerity – effort – coherence
3 things that define a person: honesty – work – results
3 hardest things to say: I love you – I forgive you – I am sorry
Conclusion: Health and money only serve to keep us alive. What justifies and gives meaning, color and flavour to our life is love. Contrary to what some say, we are not what we eat, we are what we love.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC
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