This Year, Satisfy the Deepest Desire of Your Heart

By Mary Beth Bonacci
Herald Columnist
(From the issue of 12/21/06)

If you haven’t heard about it yet, Peggy Noonan has written an amazingly wonderful book about Pope John Paul II called John Paul the Great. I’ve only read one chapter, but it’s already given me a lot to think about.
The one quote that jumped out at me wasn’t even from JPII. It was from Michael Novak, who was himself quoting the philosopher Jacques Maritain. The quote, through all the paraphrasing, said that affluence inspires us to look beyond the material to find meaning in our lives. In other words, it’s when we have money that we realize that money doesn’t fulfill us.
I can’t say that I can speak from overwhelming direct experience on this one. I have always been what one would consider solidly middle class – well, sometimes much less solidly than others. But I’ve always had food and shelter and a car to drive, so compared to much of the world’s population, I suppose I’m doing quite well.
We frequently associate poverty with piety. After all, religious priests, brothers and sisters all take a vow of poverty. Many of the saints lived in voluntary poverty. Jesus Himself lived as a poor man. Combine that with the oft-repeated saying that “money is the root of all evil” and it’s not too far a leap to conclude that the wealthy are somehow less sanctified than those who struggle.
But alas, it isn’t quite so simple. The “saying” is actually a misquotation of 1 Timothy 6:10, which says “The love of money is the root of all evil.” (Italics mine.) That’s different. It’s not having money that’s evil. It’s loving it, setting it up as a god, making it the main goal or sole aim of one’s life.
There are, of course, many wealthy people who make that money the center of their lives. They are tempted by the “heresy of materialism” to rely on their riches instead of on the Lord. They become comfortable and confident in their material power, and they forget that their entire lives are dependent on Him. Wealth can be tremendously dangerous to the spiritual life for that very reason.
But these dangers are by no means limited to the rich. How many people with little or no money make the acquisition and retention of money the centerpiece of their lives? In dealing with others, how many people of every income bracket look primarily at their own pocketbook instead of at the image and likeness of God in that other person? How many think of more about personal gain than about justice and fairness and “doing the right thing”?
In many ways, those who are poorer can be more tempted to make money a god because they don’t have much of it. They think that money would solve all of their problems. Wealth is the “greener grass” on the other side of the hill, where life is perfect.
It is, of course, not universally true that all poor people make money a god, just as it isn’t true that all wealthy people or all middle class people or all of any class of people make money a god. There are many, many astonishingly generous people in the world who very little money themselves. They give not from the excess, but from their want. They go without so that others can have a little more. God will surely reward them, far more handsomely than the will the rest of us who donate only what is left over after we’ve satisfied our own material desires.
My point here is simple. The acquisition of wealth doesn’t automatically degrade a person’s holiness. It can in fact do exactly the opposite. As Novak says, “It’s exactly because people have bread that they realize you can’t live by bread alone.”
Acquiring wealth can be a very disillusioning experience. When I first graduated from college, I worked in the Silicon Valley, where young men and women all around me were becoming rich overnight thanks to generous salary and stock option plans. I have rarely seen such a spiritually hungry group of people. They discovered early on that money doesn’t satisfy the deeper longings of the human soul. Some turned to religion. Others just dug in deeper, figuring the next million might satisfy where the previous millions had failed.
Remember all of those saints who lived lives of extreme poverty? Many of them – Sts. Teresa of Avila and Francis of Assisi among them – actually renounced significant wealth to embrace that poverty. They realized clearly the truth that the rest of us are inclined to resist.
Wealth will never satisfy the deepest desires of our hearts. The “God-shaped hole” at the center our lives is meant to be filled with Him. If we try to fill it with 20s and 50s and stocks and bonds – or the pursuit thereof – we’ll just clog it up and keep Him out. All of us – rich, poor and in-between – need to figure that out.

Bonacci is a frequent lecturer on chastity.

Copyright (c) 2006 Arlington Catholic Herald