Monday of the Thirty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time
In the United States, at least, poverty is a bad word. No one wants to be poor. Poverty, especially for its own sake, seems perverse and deranged. It just doesn’t make any sense. However, we all know, perhaps implicitly, that riches don’t get us what we want either. If you’ve seen shows like Succession or just followed celebrity gossip about the rich and famous, it’s easy to see that riches do not guarantee fulfillment. Today’s readings show that nice things do not necessarily lead to happiness alone. Instead, being properly detached, or poor in one sense, as St. Ignatius of Loyola would say, gets us closer to God and a life of happiness.
Today’s first reading shows Daniel rejecting the rich food and opting for veggies instead. By eating this lesser food, he becomes healthier than the others who dined on seven-course meals. The woman in the Gospel gives her two pennies and is more blessed for it than the rich, who have given the Temple much more significant sums of cash. Our lives are better when we reject the lies that we need things (or even people) to be happy. We can run around in circles thinking we are unhappy unless we have that one thing. Then, once we have it, we are nervous about losing it, and once we finally do lose it, we sink into despair. Yet the good news is that if we can detach with God’s grace, we can realize that we can be happy without those things. Of course, we still need basic needs like food, shelter, and human companionship. We also can celebrate having nicer things like cars, bigger houses, and vacations. Those are not bad things. However, today’s Gospel is an invitation to look at our attitude around those things. Would we be unhappy or unphased if we didn’t have those things? Is God our source of happiness, or is it something else?