Wednesday, February 28 (O.S., February 15) 2018: Wednesday of the Second Week of Lent; Apostle Onesimus of the Seventy († c. 109); New Hieromartyrs Priests Michael and John († 1930); New Hieromartyrs Priests Nicholas, Alexis and Alexis; Deacon Symeon; Venerable Martyr Peter; and Venerable Martyr Sophia († 1938); Venerable Eusebius, Hermit of Syria (5th C); Venerable Paphnutius and his Daughter Euphrosyne (5th C); Martyr Major Venerable Paphnutius, Recluse of the Kiev Caves (13th C); Dalmatovo Icon of the Mother of God (1646).
Sixth Hour: Isaiah 5:16-25
Vespers: Genesis 4:16-26
Vespers: Proverbs 5:15-6:3
We misunderstanding the moral teaching of Scripture if we think wealth is just money. As all three readings today, it’s much more.
It’s also about human and social capital, it’s about my abilities and my character and the kind of communities we create for ourselves.
Through the Prophet Isaiah, God condemns those of bad moral character “who draw iniquity with cords of falsehood, who draw sin as with cart ropes.” These individuals have contempt for God: “Let him make haste, let him speed his work that we may see it; let the purpose of the Holy One of Israel draw near, and let it come, that we may know it!”
In their pride, they fail to realize that God’s silence, His seeming unwillingness to take swift action against the sinner, isn’t weakness. God delays in responding “for our salvation” (2 Peter 3:15). God gives me time to come back to myself, repent of my sins, and return to Him in humility (see Luke 15:11-32).
Without repentance, our wealth becomes “bitter.” Without humility, we “call evil good and good evil.” We have inverted and corrupted our understanding of the moral life because we “have despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.”
This temptation has been with us from our earliest days.
Only six generations after Adam, humanity has learned build cities, herd cattle and create music. We created an abundance of material and cultural wealth. But along the way, something went terribly wrong.
Cain slew Abel in a fit of jealousy. Now Lamech kills the man who strikes him. Murder has become cold and calculating. Where once humanity depended on God right wrongs, now we seek revenge: “If Cain is avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold.”
And yet there is hope.
Though the darkness has spread throughout the human world, Adam and Eve haven’t surrendered to despair. Instead, they have a son–Seth–who God calls to take up Abel’s place in the human family (compare Acts 1:12-26). Like every newborn child, Seth is a sign of hope, a reminder that individually and all corporately we can begin again.
New beginnings in a fallen world require renewed self-discipline and a more discerning response to our neighbor.
We must, Solomon tells us, be content to drink from our “own cistern.” We need to see to our own needs and those of our family. This doesn’t mean we are indifferent, much less hostile, to our neighbor. It does mean that we must be careful in how we disperse our wealth.
Humanity is now a mixed moral bag. Virtue and vice exist in each heart and are battling for control. If we fail to account for this our material, human and social capital will be squandered. Like “streams of water in the streets” it will just be wasted.
Once again what matters most is not wealth–material, human or social–but wisdom. Without proper discernment and discretion, to say nothing of ascetical discipline and moral virtue, our best intentions will lead to slavery.
In Christ,
+Fr Gregory