Why Worry?

Gospel: Matthew 6: 24-34

A great source of worry and suffering is identified by Jesus here as our possessions and our attachment to them.  Consider all the worry and time we spend on curating our stuff.  We fill our houses with stuff.  Many have storage facilities filled with more stuff.  We protect our stuff with alarm systems, locks, stockade fences, and firearms.  Yes, we would be willing to kill another person over our stuff.  The spiral downward in the spiritual life is directly tied to our possessions and attachments.  

But now consider the one who lives simplicity and voluntary poverty.  She is not attached to possessions.  She is not worried about the incessant curating and protection of the things of mammon.  She is truly free in the deepest sense of the word, far more free  than the one with many possessions and attachments.  The one with many possessions has to spend even greater amounts of money to protect their stuff, while the person of simplicity, poverty, and detachment does not.  

Here again this teaching is fundamentally linked to the Beatitudes - poverty of spirit, meekness, purity of heart, thirst for justice.  For the person of justice knows that having many possessions is intrinsically unjust and theft from those who lack basic necessities.  To give away our excess is not charity; it is justice.  Our detachment from the things of mammon is a posture of justice and the common good.  Today is a day for us to commit to this justice and the common good.