Fr. Don's Daily Reflection - April 8, 2025
Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from You.”
“We brought nothing into this world, nor have we the power to take anything out. If we have food and clothing we have all that we need” (I Timothy 6:7-8). “You can't take it with you” goes the old saw, but the letter to Timothy goes a step further and reminds us that “you didn't bring it with you” either. Earlier the writer speaks of being content with a sufficiency (v 6). A good number of people today, even apart from New Testament teaching, see the dangers in being dominated by consumerism, the desire to have, accumulate, and consume things.
An uncluttered life and environment leaves us free for more important elements of human life: the company of other people, of our family, friendship, conversation, contemplation, prayer, reading. Human life is 'human' when it is centered more on our fellow human beings than on things. We become more fully human in interaction with other people. When we fall for the lure of things, new gadgets, new stuff, we easily become their prisoners.
Any movement toward the more simple life is counter to the major drives of our society. And it takes some conviction and strong beliefs to resist the pull of our world of things and their accumulation. The real treasures, riches, are within our personalities and human nature, in life close to God and our human neighbors. It’s to be hoped that our ‘enforced’ company with each (our family or some other unit) will show us how superior human values, human relations, are to measurable values of things.
Psalm 27: “I believe I shall see the Lord’s goodness / in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord; be strong; / be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord!”
