“Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?”
Life is more than food that we need to eat and the body is more than the clothing we put on it. “The human body shares in the dignity of “the image of God”: it is a human body precisely because it is animated by a spiritual soul, and it is the whole human person that is intended to become, in the body of Christ, a temple of the Spirit.” [1] We have a human body because we have a spiritual soul, you cannot have one without the other. There is a significant purpose for our human lives because salvation is for the whole human person.
What is Materialism and why is it against the teachings of Christ and His Church?Materialism is the belief that matter is the only reality in the world. It explains every event in the universe as resulting from the conditions and activity of matter, which thus denies the existence of God and the soul. Materialism is against the teachings of Christ and His Church because they remove God from His creation and rob us of our human identity as human bodies animated by spiritual souls. When we focus on the material aspect of our lives, we face the temptation to “plunge ourselves into earthly affairs in such a way as to imply that these are altogether divorced from religious life.” [2]
How have people viewed matter throughout history? Throughout the history of the Church, there have been heresies that have veered to the extreme opposite of materialism. There is the heresy of Gnosticism (First and Second Centuries) that rejects the human body and claims that all matter is evil. “Gnostics denied the Incarnation, claiming that Christ only appeared to be man but his humanity was an illusion.” [3] Gnostics thought that if matter is evil, God cannot take on flesh – God could not be both fully divine (spiritual) and fully human (material). Another heresy that arouse from the anti-material philosophy and theology was Iconoclasm (Seventh and Eighth Centuries). Iconoclasts believed since matter was evil, “it was sinful to make pictures and statues of Christ and the saints.” [4]
There should always be a healthy balance between the material and the spiritual. Material goods should not be worshiped (idolatry), seen as the only reality (materialism) or avoided and even hated (Gnosticism). For example, let’s consider how people could view a beer. To an alcoholic, the beer is more than matter; it can even become a god. To a puritan (a later form of Gnosticism), the beer is an evil to be avoided. Both the alcoholic and the puritan have a skewed view of the beer. To the Catholic, the beer is just a beer.
What is the greatest difference between material goods and spiritual goods? The reality of material goods is that they are temporal and thus have a limit. The reality of spiritual goods is that they are eternal and thus have no limit. The sharing of material goods is always an issue because matter is limited. There is conflict and greed in all types of societies from socialism (sharing wealth) to capitalism (creating wealth). The sharing of spiritual goods is unlimited.
“The pressing need of devoting ourselves to the consideration of the one thing necessary is especially manifest in these days of general chaos and unrest, when so many men and nations, neglecting their true destiny, give themselves up entirely to acquiring earthly possessions, failing to realize how inferior these are to the everlasting riches of the spirit. And yet St. Augustine's saying is so clearly true, that 'material goods, unlike those of the spirit, cannot belong wholly and simultaneously to more than one person.' The same house, the same land, cannot belong completely to several people at once, nor the same territory to several nations. And herein lies the reason of that unhappy conflict of interests which arises from the feverish quest of these earthly possessions.” [5]
The sharing of material goods will always mean the one sharing does not get as much as they could if they did not share. It always entails sacrifice. If we have a sandwich or a cake, the moment we share half or even a quarter of the sandwich, we immediately have less than what we started with. The whole sandwich cannot belong to our self and those we share with at the same time.
Material goods go so fast that by every year there is a new, better, faster, item. Our materialistic culture is obsessed with the latest and greatest material thing. “On the other hand, as St. Augustine often reminds us, the same spiritual treasure can belong in its entirety to all men, and at the same time to each, without any disturbance of peace between them. Indeed, the more there are to enjoy them in common the more completely do we possess them. The same truth, the same virtue, the same God, can belong to us all in like manner, and yet none of us embarrasses his fellow-possessors. Such are the inexhaustible riches of the spirit that they can be the property of all and yet satisfy the desires of each. Indeed, only then do we possess a truth completely when we teach it to others, when we make others share our contemplation; only then do we truly love a virtue when we wish others to love it also; only then do we wholly love God when we desire to make Him loved by all. Give money away, or spend it, and it is no longer yours. But give God to others, and you possess Him more fully for yourself.” [6]
The inexhaustible riches of the spirit can be explained in the example of a fire. If we have a candle and a friend wants to share the flame, we only have to light their candle. In lighting their candle, our flame is not diminished in anyway but in fact the act of charity increased the light. This is why Saint Catherine of Siena says, “if you are the person you are meant to be you will set the whole world on fire” and Jesus says, “You are the light of the world.” [7]
We see in the Gospel, two responses to material goods, conversion and hardness of heart.
What are examples of when material goods lead to conversion? The prodigal son and the woman with hemorrhaging both have a conversion when they have exhausted all material means. The Prodigal Son is given his inheritance, and he “squandered his inheritance on a life of dissipation. When he had freely spent everything, a severe famine struck that country, and he found himself in dire need.” [8] It is when he found himself in need (poor in spirit) that he returned home to his father’s house. Many times it is only when we are in need, when we have spent it all, that we return back to God, our Heavenly Father. When is a time when we have run out of material things to satisfy us and so we turn to God? The woman with a hemorrhage was “afflicted with hemorrhages for twelve years” and “had spent her whole livelihood on doctors and was unable to be cured by anyone.” [9] Many times we spend all our energies on trying to be cured, be happy, or be successful. We may go to all sorts of people, but no one is able to help us. When the woman realized that all her money is spent and that no doctor can help her, it was in desperation that she turned to Jesus. When is a time when others have failed us and in desperation, we turned to Jesus?
What are examples of when material goods have led to hardness of heart and even sin? In the fifth chapter of Mark, Jesus heals a man who “had been dwelling among the tombs, and not one could restrain him, even with a chain. In fact, he had frequently been bound with shackles and chains, but the chains had been pulled apart by him and the shackles smashed, and not one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the hillsides he was always crying out and bruising himself with stones.” [10] This poor man, who was a burden to himself and to his community, was possessed by more than one demon. When Jesus asked his name, the man replied, “Legion is my name. There are many of us.” [11] Jesus drove the demons out of the man and into a herd of swine, which ran off a cliff and drowned. Although the swine died, the man was liberated. The man was changed; he became a new person. He was seen by the people, “sitting there, clothed and in his right mind.” Later the man even pleaded to remain with Jesus as his disciple. Instead, he was told to “proclaim in the Decapolis what Jesus had done for him; and all were amazed.” [12] What a victory! This man had been possessed with thousands of demons, thus he was a danger to himself and others, and a disgrace to his community. He is now clean, calm, in his right mind and preaching the Gospel. Imagine how the people of his community must have felt. The people of his community came to Jesus and “begged him to leave their district.” [13] Why were the people mad at Jesus and asked him to leave when such a great victory was won?
“Saint Mark makes the point that about two thousand pigs were drowned. It must have meant a very considerable loss to those Gentiles. Perhaps it can be considered as the ransom demanded of this people in order to free one of their number from the power of the devil…They lost some pigs but they recovered a man. And this possessed man, this man who was rebellious and divided against himself, held under the wretched domination of a host of unclean spirits, is he not perhaps a figure of men not uncommon in our own time? In any case, perhaps the heavy material price paid for that man’s freedom, (the complete destruction of a valuable herd of two thousand pigs drowned in the sea of Galilee), can give some faint indication of the high price needed to ransom the whole of contemporary pagan man. It was a cost that could be measured in the case of the Gerasenes by the amount of wealth they had lost. Now it is a ransom whose price is the lived poverty of the one who generously seeks to redeem him. The real poverty of Christians is perhaps the price God has fixed as the ransom that can liberate the men of our time. It is indeed a price worth paying…; a single man is worth immeasurably more than two thousand pigs. He is worth more than all the riches and marvels of the created world.” [14] A pig today can cost around $100, this means the herd of 2000 swine would have cost almost a quarter of a million dollars. Think of what a quarter of a million dollars could buy. Would you rather have $250,000 or the liberation of a person who has been a burden to you and is in the grasp of the devil? Is $250,000 worth more than a soul? Jesus tells us that we can “gain the whole world yet lose our soul.” [15] Material goods brought about a hardness of heart, rather than conversion for the Gerasenes.
Perhaps, the most famous example of how material goods led to a hardness of heart is that of Judas. “Let us not be astonished at our Gospel declaring that God and mammon are irreconcilable enemies; for, who was it but mammon that had our Lord Jesus sacrificed on its hateful altar, for thirty pieces of silver?” [16]
[1] CCC 364
[2] Council of Vatican II Documents; The Church in the Modern World; Gaudium et Spes, 43
[3] Catholic Answers; The Essential Catholic Survival Guide; page 361
[4] Catholic Answers; The Essential Catholic Survival Guide; page 364
[5] Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange; The Three Ways of the Spiritual Life
[6] Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange; The Three Ways of the Spiritual Life
[7] Matthew 5:14
[8] Luke 15:13-14
[9] Luke 8:43
[10] Luke 5: 3-5
[11] Luke 5:9
[12] Luke 5:20
[13] Luke 5:17
[14] Fr. Francis Fernandez; In Conversation with God; Volume Three, 28.1
[15] Mark 8:36
[16] Abbot Gueranger, O.S.B.; The Liturgical Year; Vol. 11, page 340