Avarice 

In a January 24 speech, Pope Francis described avarice, or greed, as “a sickness of the heart, not of the wallet,” that affects rich and poor alike. It is the attempt to gain control over the world by exercising mastery over the things of the world. But it is a false mastery, the pope says, because it enslaves us to those very things which we think give us control. The Holy Father notes that “we may be the masters of the goods we possess, but often the opposite happens: they eventually take possession of us.” Or, as Brad Pitt’s character in Fight Club puts it: “The things you own end up owning you.” 

The pope says that the basic cause of the spiritual sickness of avarice is the fear of death. This fear can lead not only to disordered relationships with things but also our bodies. Take 46-year-old tech billionaire Bryan Johnson, for instance, who spends about $2 million a year attempting to overcome the aging process. According to Fortune, “Johnson, who has a medical facility in his own home, also adheres to a hyper-strict exercise and eating ritual, taking two dozen supplements/other medicines at 5 a.m. each day, consuming 1,977 ‘vegan calories a day,’ exercising for an hour, and hitting the hay at the same time after using blue-light-evasive glasses.” According to Fortune, “[Johnson’s] overall biological age is at least five years younger [than his actual age].” Seeking mastery over his body, he treats it as a piece of property subject to his control and manipulation. Seeking liberation from death he becomes a slave to his weird and expensive medical routine. By alienating himself from his body, one might argue he also has alienated himself from his neighbor, especially the needy for whom he might have provided with his vast material wealth. 

The theologian William F. May, writing about the danger of avarice in relation to the body, notes that while it’s true that the body makes us vulnerable to illness, age, and injury, it is also the body that opens us up to the world. The body allows us to discover things outside ourselves, to encounter others and to reveal ourselves to them. The body is essential to who and what we are. Its vulnerability makes relationship possible. It is not an object we possess and inhabit but a gift, just as all of creation is a gift from our Creator who reveals Himself to us through creation. This happens most dramatically with the Incarnation, when God the Son emptied Himself of glory and took a human nature, becoming man and suffering death to redeem us. Pope Francis tells us: “God is not poor: He is the Lord of everything, but, as St. Paul writes, ‘though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that by His poverty you might become rich’ (2 Cor 8:9).” While the avaricious person seeks to overcome all vulnerability through the pursuit of illusory control, Our Lord was not afraid to make Himself vulnerable to the point of death for the sake of restoring us to right relationship with Him. Christ’s perfect example of detachment reveals, per May, that “the true opposite of the tight-fistedness of avarice is not the empty-handedness of death, but the open-handedness of love.”  

posted 3/16/24