“Pride? Why? Before long — years, days, — you will be a heap of rotting flesh: worms, foul-smelling liquids, filthy shreds of cloth, and no one, on earth, will remember you.” The Way, no. 601
A common criticism on Christianity is that it’s for the ignorant, poor, and failed. “The smartest and wealthiest, mind you, don’t need silly things like religion. Goodness, religion only hinders these people from having a successful life!”
Christ came for everyone, but the proud hardened their hearts and didn’t turn to Him. Contrary to expectations, He didn’t seek to establish His kingdom in this world with wealth and honors, ruling over all nations with His army.
Jesus Christ chose to live as a failure in our eyes: born in a manger, the son of a young woman and a carpenter, both unknown. He lived working with his father’s until the age of thirty, when he began to speak to the poor, lepers, widows, prostitutes, and tax collectors. He died on a wooden cross, with a crown of thorns, humiliated by his enemies. Finally, when He rose again, He entrusted His Church to a bunch of fishermen and illiterates.
Let’s not fall into the illusion that we can follow Christ and still cling to pride in our lives.
Who were Jesus’ main opponents? The Pharisees, who cared more about their influence in society than their role as priests. They were certainly well-regarded in the society of the time, but they forgot their main goal: to serve others and teach them the Law.
“Then again, I contemplate all the oppression that is committed under the sun. Take for instance the tears of the oppressed. No one to comfort them! The power their oppressors wield. No one to comfort them! So, rather than the living who still have lives to live, I congratulate the dead who have already met death; happier than both of these are those who are yet unborn and have not seen the evil things that are done under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 4, 1-3)
The biblical phrase above summarizes the distortion we live in: we place temporal goods as the ultimate end of our lives: our money, our career, our social prestige. But when the sandcastle collapses, we are left senseless in our lives.
Many may argue that we Christians act by clinging too much to material things, contrary to what our religion preaches. Indeed, often we are hypocrites, like the Pharisees of old, placing more value on external displays of faith than on the change of our hearts.
The Church is indeed a place where many hypocrites can be found, but, to paraphrase Archbishop Fulton Sheen, there’s always room for one more. After all, if we didn’t sin, why would we need the Church?
Conversion doesn’t instantly make us perfect; we have to continue seeking progress in our spiritual lives and admit, like the tax collector: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” (Luke 18:13).
The Christian who seeks spiritual life learns that life goes beyond the accumulation of capital and material things, and therefore can deal with life in poverty or wealth. Of course, wealth brings benefits and it’s not condemnable (as shown in Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum), but it’s not the ultimate goal in our lives.
It’s better to lose prestige and maintain our sanity than to sell ourselves to the latest trend of the current world, whatever it may be. Let the modern Pharisees keep the money, the pleasures, the ideologies; we’ll stick with the Truth.
This is an old text, written in 2017 or 2018. I could review it and post an updated viersion, but I’ll keep this original version since I like it so much.