The man who unduly loves riches is a fallen man because of a bad exchange; he might have had heaven through his generosity and he has only the earth. He could have kept his soul but he sold it for material things. Camels will pass through the eyes of needles more easily than the covetous will pass through the gates of heaven. It was easy of course to condemn the rich; our world is too full of those who are doing it now. But our economy revolutionists do it because they envy wealth, not because they love poverty. It was not so with Our Divine Saviour. He Who condemned Dives and the man who ordered bigger barns the very day he died, and Who thundered that no man could serve God and Mammon, lived His Gospel. Not in a hospital or a home or city but in a stable in the fields did He bow entrance into the world He made. Not with money did He make money in the markets of exchange but as a poor carpenter. He earned His living with the two most primitive instruments used: wood and hammer. During His three years of preaching not even a roof could He claim as His own: "The foxes have lairs and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head".

Then at His death He had no wealth to leave; His Mother He gave to John; His body to the tomb; His blood to the earth; His garments to His executioners. Absolutely dispossessed, He is still hated because of its possessions. Religion is hated because it is religion and possessions are only the excuse and pretext for driving God from the earth. There was no quarreling about His will; there was no dispute about how His property would be divided; there was no lawsuit over the Lord of the Universe. He had given up everything in reparation for covetousness, keeping only one thing for Himself that was not a thing - His spirit. With a loud cry, so powerful that it freed His soul from His flesh and bore witness to the fact that He was giving His life and not having it taken away, He said in farewell: "Father, into Your hands I commend My spirit". It rang out over the darkness and lost itself in the furthermost ends of the earth. The world has made all kinds of noise since to drown it out. Men have busied themselves with nothing, to shut out hearing it - but through the fog and darkness of cities and the silence of the night that awful cry rings within the hearing of everyone who does not force himself to forget and as we listen to it we learn two lessons:

1. The more ties we have to earth the harder will it be for us to die.

2. We were never meant to be perfectly satisfied here below.

In every friendship hearts grow and entwine themselves together, so that the two hearts seem to make only one heart with a single common thought. That is why separation is so painful: It is not so much two hearts separating but one heart being torn asunder. When a man loves wealth inordinately, he and it grow together like a tree pushing itself in growth through the crevices of a rock. Death to such a man is a painful wrench because of his close identification with the material. He has everything to live for, nothing to die for.

As a result, he becomes at death the most destitute and despoiled beggar in the universe, for he has nothing he can take with him. He discovers too late that he he did not belong to himself but to things - for wealth is a pitiless master. It would not allow him during life to think of anything else except increasing itself. Now he discovers too late that by consecrating himself to filling his barns, he was never free to save the only thing he could carry with him to eternity: his soul. In order to acquire a part, he lost the whole; he won a fraction of the earth, now he will need only six feet of it. Like a giant tied down by ten thousand ropes to ten thousand stakes, he is no longer free to think about anything else than what he must leave. That is why death is so hard for the covetous rich.

On the contrary, as the ties to earth become lessened, the easier is the separation. Where our treasure is, there is our heart also. If we have lived for God, then death is a liberation. Earth and its possessions are the cage which confines us and death is the opening of its door, enabling our soul to wing its way to its Beloved for which alone it had lived and for which it only waited to die. Our powers of dispossession are greater than our powers of possession; our hands could never contain all the gold in the world but we can wash our hands of its desire. We cannot own the world but we can disown it. That is why the soul with the vow of poverty is more satisfied than the richest covetous man in the world, for the latter has not yet all he wants, while the religious wants nothing; in a certain sense the religious has all and is perfectly happy. It was such poverty of spirit raised to its sublimest peak which made the death of Our Lord so easy. He had no ties to earth. His treasure was with the Father and His soul followed the spiritual law of gravitation. Gold, like dirt, falls; charity, like fire, rises: "Father into your hands I commend My spirit".

The death of Our Lord on the Cross likewise reveals that we are meant to be perpetually dissatisfied here below. If earth was meant to be a Paradise, then He Who made it would never have taken leave of it on Good Friday. The commending of the spirit to the Father was at the same time the refusal to commend it to the earth. The completion or fulfillment of life is in heaven, not on earth.

Our Lord in His last Word is saying that nowhere else can we be satisfied except in God. It is absolutely impossible for us to be perfectly happy here below. Nothing proves this more than disappointment. One might almost say the essence of life is disappointment. We look forward to a position, to marriage, to ownership, to power, to popularity, to wealth; and when we attain them we have to admit, if we are honest that they never come up to our expectations. As children we looked forward to Christmas; when it did come and we had our fill of sweets and tested every toy or rocked every doll and then crept into our beds, we said in our own little heart of hearts: "Somehow or other, it did not quite come up to expectations". That experience is repeated a thousand times in life.

But why is there disappointment?

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Sunday, May 24, 2009

I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!

I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.

HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -