In the second chapter of Ecclesiastes there is the impressive story of the rich man Solomon and his disillusionment. Our Lord would have me take it up and read. Here are the words in which the story is told:
"I said: I will go and abound with delights and enjoy good things, and I saw that this also was vanity.... I made me great works, I built me houses and planted vineyards. I made gardens and orchards and set them with trees of all kinds, and I made me ponds of water to water therewith the wood of the young trees. I got me manservants and maidservants and had a great family; and herds of oxen and great flocks of sheep. ... I heaped together for myself silver and gold and the wealth of kings and provinces. I made me singing men and singing women, and the delights of the sons of men ... and I surpassed in riches all that were before me in Jerusalem ... and whatsoever my eyes desired I refused them not, and I withheld not my heart from enjoying every pleasure and delighting itself in the things I had prepared. And, when I turned myself to all the works which my hands had wrought, and to the labors wherein I had labored in vain, I saw in all things vanity and vexation of mind and that nothing was lasting under the sun. . . ."
Despite the fact that centuries have passed since these words were written, the lure of riches still succeeds in holding the heart enslaved. We have only to look around the world and consider the futility of the lives and ambitions of so many who found, at death, that their hands were empty. It is to save me from that terrible sense of failure that Christ Our Lord leads me to this place of prayer.
In a remote district in Ireland there lives an old man, over seventy. He lives all alone. He is blind. Every morning, for many a year, that poor blind old man is up out of bed between halfpast two and three. Shortly after three he sets out for the parish church, which is four miles away. The journey takes him several hours, but nothing will hold him back. There are mornings of heavy rain, mornings of bitter east wind, snow or ice; it does not matter. The old man is on the way before dawn, and why?
Because he will allow no obstacle to prevent him from being at daily Mass and daily Holy Communion. He is always most cheery and dismisses lightly the sacrifice he makes if ever you refer to it. But his is a living faith.
What connection has this anecdote with what Our Lord is saying to me today about riches? It is intended to offset the dangers He has stressed. One wonders if that old man's faith would burn thus brightly if he was surrounded by the comforts which wealth could supply him. Perhaps it would. But experience would seem to point the other way. It is most often those who have little of this world's goods whose whole minds and hearts take a Godward direction. They recognize in their poverty that the world here has little to offer; they make the great transfer, seeking and finding the satisfaction they hunger for in the things of God, in the solid fare provided by our Catholic Faith.
That is one reason why it is invariably the tendency of truly spiritual men to reduce their personal wants to the minimum. They always seek less rather than more. If riches entangle the heart, detachment sets it free. If riches blind the mind, detachment fills it with divine light. And detachment proves itself to be genuine, most of all in real actual want, in the practice of "the art of doing without:"
Teach me this art, divine Master, that my heart may soar into Your love. I cannot be Your disciple except in the measure in which I learn to renounce myself. I am slow to learn and still slower to practice. . . . Let me learn here, with You in poverty, to cultivate a love of poverty, at least its spirit - and its actuality too, if You deign to call me to it.