"Rabbi what do you think about money?" the disciple asked his master.

"Look outside the window," said the master. "What do you see?"
"I see a woman with a kid, a cart drawn by two horses and a man that is going to the market place".
"Good. Now look at this mirror what do you see?”
"What do you want me to see Rabbi? Myself, obviously".
"Now think about it: the window is made of glass so it is the mirror. A thin cote of silver behind the glass is enough to make a man see only himself."

As we continue to focus on the life within the religious vow of Poverty, we are convinced that our life commitment has universal value for the rest of humanity and as we have proven last year about chastity as well, the value of poverty is part of the truth of Human Nature.
 

A whole and a part

Love for wealth is regressive; it brings a person back to the infantile self-centeredness stage of development. That is, it denies the two principles over which human life is founded:
(1) the principle of Freedom, which defines a person as an independent and autonomous individual, and
(2) the principle of Equality, which defines a person as a social being, part of a community.
These two principles correlate exactly with the two commandments of Christianity. Love God above all else by detaching from everything and everybody as a guaranty of absolute freedom. At the same time, love our neighbour as we love ourselves, as a condition without which there is no human community. In other words, it is by sharing at all levels, including the material goods that life in society is possible.

A human being is a whole, self-contained and a unique indivisible individual, and at the same time is always part of a family and a community. Though a whole in himself, an individual is also a part because his existence cannot fall outside the three human categories: father, mother, and child; and because the individual existence of each one of these, father, mother or child, implies the existence of the other two.

Happiness and self-realization is the end result of the harmony between the two principles mentioned above: Freedom by which the individual is understood as a whole and assisted by rights that others should respect; and Equality by which the individual is understood as a part and has duties towards others. Unfortunately, as the little story above suggests, material goods very easily make us selfish and blind us to the needs of others.
 

Greed is the poverty of the rich

“The less you are and the less you express your life the more you have and the more alienated is your life”, said Karl Marx. Jesus expressed this long before when he said, “You cannot serve God and money” Luke 16:13. That is to say, in his lifetime, one cannot conjugate both verbs, to be and to have, because they are two antagonistic principles. “The wise man is either poor or becomes poor” (Seneca). Being rich materially will result in being poor spiritually and vice versa.

The poor man that is happy with what he has, and does not seek more material riches, is rich. Whilst the rich man that is never satisfied with what he possesses, and seeks more, is poor. Poor because his attention is not focused on what he has got but what he still can get. Hence, as there is always someone richer than him, he sees himself always wanting, thus poor. This can be analogous to an anorexic teenager girl fooled by a false perception of her reality. She is so focused on becoming slimmer that she sees herself fat, thus compelling her to reduce still more her weight, risking death if not cured.
 

A healthy economy based on a sick man

Here in Canada and the United States, we are breaking the old balanced distribution of time which was: 8 hours work plus 8 hours rest, plus 8 hours of social relations when the working hours are for so many people 10 and even 12 hours. We seem to be going back to the same working hours of the first Industrial revolution at the end of XIX century. This creates a surplus of goods that must be consumed in the same proportion to keep the economy going and healthy, thus reducing humans to producer-consuming machines.

Wouldn’t we be healthier, enjoy life physically, morally and spiritually much more, if we worked less, and consumed less? Obviously, the economy is healthier in America than in any other part of the world but, isn't it at the expense of a sick man? For how long can a sick man keep up with this pace? What is more important the health of the economy or the health of the man that sustains the economy? (Luke 12:16-23)