Is it prudence or avarice? How can we know

	Living the Scriptures  with St. Paul University  Catholic Center  Faye Darnall

You have to feel for this man who does well in the world, then dies before he gets the chance to enjoy it. What has he really done wrong?

Who hasn't bought a bigger house because they needed the room, or even just put up a shed in the yard to store garden equipment? My tiny garage is overflowing. Does wanting a storage shed make me a fool?

18th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Aug. 1, 2004) Ec 1:2; 2:21-23 Ps 90:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 14, 17 Col 3:1-5, 9-11 Lk 12:13-21

To build, to accumulate for the future: this seems not only reasonable, but prudent. When does one cross the line from the virtue of prudence to the vice of avarice? How can we know when things, including money, have become idols, displacing God and "what matters to God"? Are there warning signals?

We must ask these questions, and often, because ownership has a seductive power. It's easy to delude ourselves. We think we need more without recognizing that we merely want the prestige, the luxury, sometimes even the power of owning it.

Everything in our world participates in that seduction. "We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at the highest pitch of artificial tension, to strain every human desire to the limit and to create as many new desires and synthetic passions as possible," wrote Thomas Merton in 1948 (The Seven Storey Mountain).

Think of how much more anxious we are now about what we don't have, how we don't look. In a culture that says nothing is more important than a surfeit of things, it requires genuine spiritual combat to live a life that "does not consist of possessions."

For me, the surest sign that my priorities aren't God's is that I'm too busy taking care of things I own to pray, or I think I am.

Imagine being too busy with your house and property to talk to your wife, husband, or children. They would notice. You would notice. When we neglect the most intimate relationships of life, those relationships suffer; so, too, our relationship with God.

Christ embeds a warning sign in the story. Note the man's thought: "Then I shall say to myself, 'as for YOU . . . eat, drink and be merry!'" Where is the thought, "as for my neighbor . . . " "as for the least of my brothers and sisters"? We are Christians. We understand ourselves not as isolated units, but as part of a whole, the body of Christ, interconnected with everyone. Others needs ARE our needs.

	Reflection questions • What are your own warning signs that priorities have become skewed, that things own you instead of you owning things? • Once you recognize the warnings, can you learn to intervene earlier, realigning life to what matters to God? • Is it possible to live more simply, so that you have more time for God, and the needs of God's people?

We all know that property and wealth require time and energy, lots of it. The more things we have, the more they consume us, and the more we consume the resources of the earth.

It's considered prudent to acquire enough to live. Is it not equally prudent to make sure we don't have too much to live eternally?

This is "what matters to our God," that nothing of this world keeps us from the love that will unite us to God forever. Isn't that what we really want?

Faye Darnall is Woman Chaplain at St. Paul University Center, serving there since 1995.

St. Paul's Web site is www.stpaulscc.org

Faith Alive!

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