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The pressing need of devoting ourselves to the consideration of
the one thing necessary is especially manifest in these days of
general chaos and unrest, when so many men and nations, neglecting
their true destiny, give themselves up entirely to acquiring
earthly possessions, failing to realize how inferior these are to
the everlasting riches of the spirit.
And yet St. Augustine's saying is so clearly true, that
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'material
goods, unlike those of the spirit, cannot belong wholly and
simultaneously to more than one person.' [1]
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The same house, the
same land, cannot belong completely to several people at once, nor
the same territory to several nations. And herein lies the reason
of that unhappy conflict of interests which arises from the
feverish quest of these earthly possessions.
On the other hand, as St. Augustine often reminds us, the same
spiritual treasure can belong in its entirety to all men, and at
the same time to each, without any disturbance of peace between
them. Indeed, the more there are to enjoy them in common the more
completely do we possess them. The same truth, the same virtue,
the same God, can belong to us all in like manner, and yet none of
us embarrasses his fellow-possessors. Such are the inexhaustible
riches of the spirit that they can be the property of all and yet
satisfy the desires of each. Indeed, only then do we possess a
truth completely when we teach it to others, when we make others
share our contemplation; only then do we truly love a virtue when
we wish others to love it also; only then do we wholly love God
when we desire to make Him loved by all. Give money away, or spend
it, and it is no longer yours. But give God to others, and you
possess Him more fully for yourself. We may go even further and
say that, if we desired only one soul to be deprived of Him, if we
excluded only one soul -- even the soul of one who persecutes and
calumniates us -- from our own love, then God Himself would be
lost to us.
This truth, so simple and yet so sublime, gives rise to an
illuminating principle: it is that whereas material goods, the
more they are sought for their own sake, tend to cause disunion
among men, spiritual goods unite men more closely in proportion as
they are more greatly loved. This principle helps us to appreciate
how necessary is the interior life; and, incidentally, it
virtually contains the solution of the social question and of the
economic crisis which afflicts the world to-day. The Gospel puts
it very simply:
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'Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his justice,
and all these things shall be added unto you.'
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If the world to-day
is on its death-bed, it is because it has lost sight of a
fundamental truth which for every Christian is elementary.
The profoundest truths of all, and the most vital, are in fact
those elementary verities which, through long meditation and deep
thought, have become the norm of our lives; those truths, in other
words, which are the object of our habitual contemplation.
God is now showing men what a great mistake they make when they
try to do without Him, when they regard earthly enjoyment as their
highest good, and thus reverse the whole scale of values, or, as
the ancient philosophers put it, the subordination of ends. As
though in the hope of compensating for the poor quality of earthly
goods, men are striving to increase their quantity; they are
trying to produce as much as possible in the order of material
enjoyment. They are constructing machinery with the object of
increasing production at a greater profit. This is the ultimate
objective. But what is the consequence? The surplus cannot be
disposed of; it is wasted, and unemployment is the result. The
worker starves in enforced idleness while others die of surfeit.
The present state of the world is called a crisis. But in fact it
is more than a crisis; it is a condition of affairs which, if men
only had eyes to see, ought to be revealing, it ought to show men
that they have sought their last end where it is not to be found,
in earthly enjoyment -- instead of God. They are seeking happiness
in an abundance of material possessions which are incapable of
giving it; possessions which sow discord among those that seek
them, and a greater discord according as they are sought with
greater avidity.
Do what you will with these material goods: share them out
equally, make them the common property of all. It will be no
remedy for the evil; for, so long as earthly possessions retain
their nature and man retains the nature which is his, he will
never find his happiness in them. The remedy is this, and this
only: to consider the one thing necessary, and to ask God to give
us saints who live only on this thought, saints who will give the
world the spirit that it needs. God has always sent us saints in
troubled times. We need them especially to-day.
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