Thursday of the Second Week of Lent

Franciscan Coat of Arms
over the old school building
at Mt St Francis

Cursed is the man who trusts in human beings,

who seeks his strength in flesh,
whose heart turns away from the Lord.

Here’s an irony for you: the one who trusts no one, thinking he can rely only on himself; and amasses a huge fortune to protect himself from poverty is actually putting all his stock in other human beings. 

Money is worth only what people say its worth; it is an entirely human invention and is worth nothing in God’s sight. So here’s a fellow who spends his life piling up lucre only to have the rug pulled out when a recession sweeps across the land.

Of course he might decide he’s especially clever and invest in gold, or real estate or tulips. But none of that matters; he still depends entirely on other people to assess his worth.

Eventually he must discover they think nothing of him or his money and his worth is precisely nothing. The miser finds himself as lonely as Scrooge on Christmas Eve, shut out of family, friends and neighbors. Real people invest in one another. 

My mother had a remarkable saying when I was a kid. (It’s amazing how wise that young woman was.) When our bald tires went flat, or the car blew its final backfire, she would say, “It’s only money. Easy come, easy go.”

My parents pinched every penny till it squealed. We bought bread from the day-old store, mixed whole milk with powdered milk, drank generic cool aid with saccharine and canned anything that could fit into a mason jar.

There were days in 1950 and ‘51 when they didn’t know where next week’s meals would come from. The money never came easy and it didn’t go easy, but we always had God to get us through. As the psalmist tells us today:

Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,
whose hope is the Lord.
He is like a tree planted beside the waters
that stretches out its roots to the stream….

As we celebrate this Season of Lent we look at our own finances once again. Are we settled too comfortably? Does our charitable giving put our financial security at risk? If not, why not? Do we still need God to manage the future? Or do we trust in other people to assess our worth? 

P.S

You might enjoy last year's reflection on the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. It's still online at http://kenbartsch-homily.blogspot.com/2010/03/thursday-of-second-week-of-lent.html