Detachment  from Earthly Possessions

Your  love for earthly possessions  is one of the  biggest obstacles to your moral and spiritual advancement. Through this attachment to  possessions  you shatter your affective faculties, carrying them over to material things. Be honest with yourself: does wealth provide an unmixed happiness? Even when your coffers are full, is there not an emptiness in your heart? At the bottom of that basket of flowers is there not always a hidden serpent? I understand justifiable satisfaction not felt by a person who, through diligent and honorable labor, has gained a fortune; however, from this satisfaction – very natural and approved by God – to an attachment that absorbs all other sentiments and paralyzes the impulses of the heart there is a great distance; the same great distance that separates sordid miserliness  and exaggerated  wastefulness:  two vices betweenwhich  God has placed charity, that holy and sound virtue that teaches the rich to give without ostentation so that the poor may receive without feeling debased.

Whether your fortune has come from your family or whether you have earned it from your labor, there is one thing that you must never forget: everything comes from God and returns to God. Nothing on earth belongs to you, not even your poor body: death will strip you of it, just as it will all other material possessions. You are trustees, not proprietors – do not delude yourselves. God has loaned them to you and you will have to return them; and God loans them on the condition that the surplus, at least, should go to those who lack what is necessary.

One  of your friends lends you a certain sum. However dishonest you might be, you will scrupulously pay off the loan and will be grateful to him. Well then, that is the position of all who are wealthy. God is the heavenly friend who has loaned them their riches; he asks nothing for himself except love and acknowledgment, but he demands that the wealthy in turn give to the poor, who, like the rich, are just as much his children.

It is in vain that you try to delude yourselves while on earth, coloring with the name “virtue” what is often nothing more than selfishness;  that you call “saving”  and “foresight” what is only cupidity and greed, or “generosity” what is nothing but prodigality on your own behalf. For example, the father of a family abstains from practicing charity; he saves and piles up the gold, declaring that he is doing so in order to leave as much as possible to his children so that they will not fall into poverty. That is very just and fatherly, I agree, and one cannot blame him. But is that always the sole motive that guides him? Is it not often just a compromise with his conscience in order to justify in his own eyes and the world’s his personal attachment to earthly possessions? Even so, admitting that his fatherly love is his sole motive, is that any reason for him to forget his brothers and sisters before God? When he already has a surplus, will he leave his children in poverty because they will have a little less of it? Instead, is it not really giving them a lesson in selfishness and hardening their hearts? Instead, is it not stifling in them the love for their neighbor? Fathers and mothers, you are greatly mistaken if you believe that by such means you will increase you children’s love for you. By teaching them to be selfish toward others, you teach them to be selfish toward you also.

Those who have worked hard and accumulated wealth by the sweat of their brow are commonly heard to say that when money is earned one grasps its value more fully. Nothing could be truer! Well then, may those who profess to fully grasp the value of money practice charity according to their means, and they will have greater merit than those who, born in abundance, know nothing about the hard fatigue of labor. But on the other hand, if these same persons who remember their sufferings and efforts are selfish and hard toward the poor, they are much guiltier than the others, for the more one knows from personal experience the hidden grief of poverty, the more one should be inclined to relieve it in others.

Unfortunately, there is always in those who are wealthy a sentiment as strong as their attachment to riches: the sentiment of pride. When the poor implore their assistance, it is not rare to see the newly rich wowing them with tales of their efforts and know-how, instead of coming to their aid, and then finishing by saying to them, “Do what I have done.” According to them, God’s goodness has nothing to do with their wealth. All the merit falls solely to them. Their pride casts a veil over their eyes and shuts their ears. In spite of all their intelligence and skill, they do not understand that God can undo them with a single word.

People who become attached to earthly possessions are like children who cannot see but the present moment. Those who do not become attached are like adults who see the things that are most important by understanding these prophetic words of the Savior, “My kingdom is not of this world.”

The Lord orders none to get rid of what they possess and be reduced to voluntary beggary, because then they would become a burden on society. Proceeding in such a manner would be to misunderstand detachment from earthly possessions;  it  would be selfishness of another type, because it would imply exempting oneself from  the  responsibility that  wealth weighs on  those who possess it. God grants wealth to those who seem capable of administering it for the benefit of all. Thus, the rich have a mission, which they can render beautiful and advantageous for themselves. To reject wealth when God has given it to you is to renounce the benefits of the good you can do by administering it wisely. To know how to do without it when one does not have it, to know how to put it to good use when one does, and to know how to sacrifice it when necessary, is to act in accord with the Lord’s designs. May those who receive what one calls in the world a good fortune say to themselves, “My God, you have sent me a new responsibility;  give me the strength to carry it out according to your holy will.”

My friends, this is what I wanted to teach you regarding detachment from earthly possessions.  I  will summarize it  by saying: Know how to be content with little. If you are poor, do not envy the rich, because wealth is not necessary for happiness. If you are rich, do not forget that your possessions have been entrusted to you, and that you must justify their use as if you were giving an accounting of expenditures. Do not be an unfaithful trustee by utilizing your possessions to satisfy your pride and sensuality. Do not think that you have the right to dispose for your sole use what is nothing but a loan, and not a gift. If you are unable to repay it, you do not have the right to ask for it in the first place; and remember that those who give to the poor are settling a debt they have contracted with God.

Lacordaire (Constantine,  1863)