24 May 2018
Thursday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time
James 5 places us in front of the reality of what remains for eternity. Our baser passions so frequently lead us to exult in the vanities of this world: wealth, prestige, power. But assuredly, these things will pass away, not for some people, but for everyone who has them. St. James is unrelenting in his critique: “you rich, weep and wail… your clothes have become moth-eaten, your gold and silver have corroded, and that corrosion will be a testimony against you, it will devour your flesh like a fire.” This corrosion is the corrosion of wealth whose purpose has been forgotten. No created thing exists for any other reason than to serve as an instrument through which we are to abide in God’s love by offering that love to others. We will answer to God for the way that we have administered the wealth entrusted to us (Mt 25). Any wealth that we do not use for God’s greater glory in service of the people God loves is wealth that is not only stolen from God but also from our neighbor as “wages withheld” while we “stored up treasure” and “lived on earth in luxury and pleasure” (Jm 5). If we think that James goes too far in this letter, perhaps we can revisit what Jesus says in the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31).
In Mark 9 Jesus tells us what we ought to do when we recognize a source of sin: “cut it off.” Even if what occasions the sin might be a good in itself given to us by God, when we have perverted it to the point that it no longer serves as an instrument of God’s love for us and for others, we should not persist in being more attached to the gift than to the Giver. “It is better for you to enter into life maimed than with two hands to go into Gehenna, into the unquenchable fire.”