Treasure in Heaven (Matt 6:19-24)

Hi William

I believe we do not have to prevent ourselves from being rich as it can be a good thing if we use it the right way, like helping others. It’s just that it should not be our ultimate goal and we should be detach from it, loving the giver more than the gift. However, this can be a challenge I suppose..

For a more detailed commentary, you can read the following which I had extracted from The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries (http://groups.google.com/group/dailyword) based on last Wednesday gospel reflection, Luke 6:20-26, which helped me understand better on the definition of wealth and poverty.

“….the "rich" are to be understood as those who strive to accumulate possessions heedless of whether or not they are doing so lawfully, and who seek their happiness in those possessions, as if they were their ultimate goal. But people who inherit wealth or acquire it through honest work can be really poor provided they are de- tached from these things and are led by that detachment to use them to help others, as God inspires them. We can find in Sacred Scriptures a number of peo- ple to whom the beatitude of the poor can be applied although they possessed considerable wealth--Abraham, Isaac, Moses, David, Job, for example.

As early as St. Augustine's time there were people who failed to understand poverty and riches properly: they reasoned as follows: The Kingdom of Heaven belongs to the poor, the Lazaruses of this world, the hungry; all the rich are bad, like this rich man here. This sort of thinking led St. Augustine to explain the deep meaning of wealth and poverty according to the spirit of the Gospel: "Listen, poor man, to my comments on your words. When you refer to yourself as Lazarus, that holy man covered with wounds, I am afraid your pride makes you describe yourself incorrectly. Do not despise rich men who are merciful, who are humble: or, to put it briefly, do not despise poor rich men. Oh, poor man, be poor yourself; poor, that is, humble [...]. Listen to me, then. Be truly poor, be devout, be humble; if you glory in your rag- ged and ulcerous poverty, if you glory in likening yourself to that beggar lying outside the rich man's house, then you are only noticing his poverty, and nothing else. What should I notice you ask? Read the Scriptures and you will understand what I mean. Lazarus was poor, but he to whose bosom he was brought was rich. 'It came to pass, it is written, that the poor man died and he was brought by the angels to Abraham's bosom.' To where? To Abraham's bosom, or let us say, to that mysterious place where Abraham was resting. Read [...] and remember that Abraham was a very wealthy man when he was on earth: he had abundance of money, a large family, flocks, land; yet that rich man was poor, because he was humble. 'Abraham believed God and he was reckoned righteous.' [...] He was faithful, he did good, received the commandment to offer his son in sacrifice, and he did not refuse to offer what he had received to Him from whom he had received it. He was approved in God's sight and set before us as an example of faith" ("Sermon", 14).

To sum up: poverty does not consist in something purely external, in having or not having material goods, but in something that goes far deeper, affecting a per- son's heart and soul; it consists in having a humble attitude to God, in being devout, in having total faith. "True poverty" should be an ex-pression of faith in God and a sign that the heart is not satisfied with created things and aspires to the Creator; that it wants to be filled with love of God so as to be able to give this same love to everyone. If a Christian has these virtues and also has an abun- dance of material possessions, he should be detached from his wealth and act charitably towards others and thus be pleasing to God. On the other hand, if someone is not well-off he is not justified in God's sight on that account, if he fails to strive to acquire those virtues in which true poverty consists.’’

I am not sure if the above answers your question but hopefully it helps. :)

Feel like sharing the following verse from 1 Timothy 6:7 :

For we brought nothing into the world, just as we shall not be able to take anything out of it.

Everything that we have is a gift from God. And I think the definition of rich from what Elizabeth quoted is really good.

@William: Maybe you can define more what is in your mind when you mentioned the word rich. 

@Priscilla: Thanks a lot for your sharing. For your comment, I think the word too should not be even there. And you might want to define the word wealthy too.

@Bong, Liz: thanks for the sharing. I will reflect more on this

@Priscilla: I am confused over the saying from St. Basil, do you know what was the background situation when he is saying that words?

@Valent: In this case, I am referring to material things, I percieved St. Basil was trying to say that excessive material richness has to be distributed to the poor. For example, If someone is earning 3K a month and he only need 2K, hence the other 1K is not actually belong to him/her.

Cheers.