GOD'S CURE FOR GREED AND AVARICE

FRIDAY, THIRTEENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

Reflection from Friar Nicholas Okeke, OP 

Amos 8:4-6,9-12; Ps 119:2,10,20,30,40,131; Mt 9:9-13

The Sickness of Greed and Avarice

The presence of greed and avarice in us indicates a spiritual sickness. It shows how poor we are in our knowledge of who we are. The scriptures testify that the victims of these vices are worshippers of another god. Prophet Amos described them as constantly meditating on different ways to cheat and defraud to increase their gain. The constant meditation on various ways of cheating people replaced meditation on the word of God. Surprisingly, this sickness afflicted the people of God, who received the injunction to meditate on the word of God constantly. This was the subject of Amos’ prophecy, as given in the first reading. “Listen to this, you who trample on the needy and try to suppress the poor people of the country, you who say, ‘When will New Moon be over so that we can sell our corn, and sabbath so that we can market our wheat?” The vices of greed and avarice are like madness that drives the human person to act like an insane person. An avaricious or greedy person is driven without and cannot control himself. Only God can cure the madness that greed and avarice inflict on a person.

To bring about the cure, the Lord promised through the prophet to cause the sun to go down at noon. In other words, the Lord will accomplish this by reducing the material things or wealth we worship and desire to rubbish or filth on the street. He will cause all that we put so much value on our gold, diamond, crude oil, Bitcoin, etc, to be useless the day he touches us personally or communally. They are referred to as the sun here because the avaricious and the greedy live by the light of these creatures. “I will make the sun go down at noon, and darken the earth in broad daylight. I am going to turn your feasts into funerals, all your singing into lamentation; I will have your loins all in sackcloth, your heads all shaved.” It will be a terrible day for all that the greedy have lived for will disappear, and their wealth will lose their worth. Many of us have had a personal experience of the worthlessness of these earthly riches and are related to those who lost everything they have worked for in an instant. Hence, our experiences authenticate the word of God spoken by the prophet Amos. The infinite mercy of God makes him remove these pitfalls on our way so that we may seek what is truly valuable. In addition to destroying the false riches, he will hide his word, our true wealth, from easy access so that we may know how wickedly we acted by forsaking the true fountain of life for useless cisterns that hold no water. “See what days are coming—it is the Lord who speaks—days when I will bring famine on the country, a famine not of bread, a drought not of water, but of hearing the word of the Lord.”

The evidence that God made us for a higher purpose that is not purely material is within each of us. For within each of us is a hunger that nothing material can satisfy. The presence of this deeper hunger is the cause of our human tendency to excessively desire material pleasure, seek worldly satisfaction, and acquire material riches beyond what we need. The manifestations of greed and avarice are our attempts to satisfy a spiritual hunger with material goods and pleasures. Thus, the amassing of material goods will never quench our spiritual thirst that only God can. Happy indeed is the man who discovers the true wealth the word of God contains. Hence, we consider Matthew fortunate, who was aided by the grace of God to understand the incomparable riches contained in the word of God, which enabled him to leave his lucrative office and follow Jesus Christ. The grace at work in his life helped him to know how sick he was and his need for a doctor. “It is not the healthy who need the doctor, but the sick.” Only the word of God heals us of the sickness of greed and avarice.  

Let us pray: Grant us, Lord, the grace to constantly work for the food and the good which will never go bad, so that meditating daily on your word that gives life, we may know our heavenly riches and be free from the affectations of greed and avarice and worship you in truth and in spirit.