In the past two DM’s we have talked about how Greed is behind the current Republican budget that wants to cut over a trillion dollars from the most needy—those needing SNAP (food stamps) and Medicaid (health care), etc. And at the same time add $4.5 trillion to the debt (which will be mostly paid by the middle class) and lessen the taxes of large corporations and the richest ones among us.
I have cited Bernie Sanders, Hildegard of Bingen and Thomas Aquinas on the driving force of Greed and Avarice built into this appalling set of priorities. And how “hard and cold hearts” result from such greed as well as spawn it.
Aquinas offers medicine for confronting greed in oneself or others. Since greed “knows no limits and tends toward infinity,” he proposes that people look elsewhere than money for the limitless and the infinite.
And where is that to be found? In the spiritual. And he offers three instances. First, he points out that humans can “never love too much.” It is not possible to fix any limits to the increase of love in this life.” So love is a place to invest one’s quest for the limitless.
Second, he says, the infinite is also found in knowledge. A human being “can never know too much,” he proposes. Seek knowledge, keep curiosity alive, seek and seek and link up with other seekers. Curiosity can go on all life long, not to mention curiosity about what goes on after this life.
Such seeking is a great way to meet new friends, link up with others, build community, rediscover the beauty and wonder in life, and keep one’s soul young, remaining true to the mystic (the puer and puella) in oneself.
And a third and authentic way to experience the infinite, says Aquinas, is through our creativity. “By our reason and hands” we can create “an infinite variety” of necessities of life and we conceive of “an infinite number of things” and make “an infinite number of instruments.” That is true, isn’t it? Have two painters ever painted the same painting? Two poets written identical poems? Two musicians composed the same music?
Aquinas is all for humans stretching ourselves to the infinite but he is warning us that there are bogus ways to exercise that yearning. Rather, we should seek it in love, knowledge and creativity.
Such a life of love, knowledge and creativity will not render you hard and coldhearted in your quest for the infinite—rather, you will make good friends, build community, share joy, find meaning, and excite others.
And you will not fall into cult worship and make idols of things or people. You will be too busy discovering what is wondrous. What poet Rilke called the “miracle of existence.”
Instead of hoarding, you will give thanks and praise for what counts most: Our shared existence. With praise, comes contentment.
Gandhi: “There is enough for everyone’s need, but not for everyone’s greed.”
Adapted from Matthew Fox, Sheer Joy: Conversations with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality, pp. 488ff., 259, 304.
See also: Fox, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, pp. 180-200.
Adapted from Matthew Fox, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society, pp. 301, 306.
And Fox, Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ.
And Fox, A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice.
And Fox, Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth.
Banner image: Stop Corporate Greed, Photo by Meiling on Flickr.
Queries for Contemplation
Do you agree with Aquinas that the path to the infinite is not through money and the power it generates but is available to everyone thorough love, knowledge and creativity? How would the world change if this were the bottom line of culture and civilization instead of greed?
Recommended Reading
Sheer Joy: Conversations with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality
Matthew Fox renders Thomas Aquinas accessible by interviewing him and thus descholasticizing him. He also translated many of his works such as Biblical commentaries never before in English (or Italian or German of French). He gives Aquinas a forum so that he can be heard in our own time. He presents Thomas Aquinas entirely in his own words, but in a form designed to allow late 20th-century minds and hearts to hear him in a fresh way.
“The teaching of Aquinas comes through will a fullness and an insight that has never been present in English before and [with] a vital message for the world today.” ~ Fr. Bede Griffiths (Afterword).
Foreword by Rupert Sheldrake
The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance
In what may be considered the most comprehensive outline of the Christian paradigm shift of our Age, Matthew Fox eloquently foreshadows the manner in which the spirit of Christ resurrects in terms of the return to an earth-based mysticism, the expression of creativity, mystical sexuality, the respect due the young, the rebirth of effective forms of worship—all of these mirroring the ongoing blessings of Mother Earth and the recovery of Eros, the feminine aspect of the Divine.
“The eighth wonder of the world…convincing proof that our Western religious tradition does indeed have the depth of imagination to reinvent its faith.” — Brian Swimme, author of The Universe Story and Journey of the Universe.
“This book is a classic.” Thomas Berry, author of The Great Work and The Dream of the Earth.
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society
Visionary theologian and best-selling author Matthew Fox offers a new theology of evil that fundamentally changes the traditional perception of good and evil and points the way to a more enlightened treatment of ourselves, one another, and all of nature. In comparing the Eastern tradition of the 7 chakras to the Western tradition of the 7 capital sins, Fox allows us to think creatively about our capacity for personal and institutional evil and what we can do about them.
“A scholarly masterpiece embodying a better vision and depth of perception far beyond the grasp of any one single science. A breath-taking analysis.” — Diarmuid O’Murchu, author of Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics
Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election
Matthew Fox tells us that he had always shied away from using the term “Anti-Christ” because it was so often used to spread control and fear. However, given today’s rise of authoritarianism and forces of democracide, ecocide, and christofascism, he turns the tables in this book employing the archetype for the cause of justice, democracy, and a renewed Earth and humanity.
From the Foreword: If there was ever a time, a moment, for examining the archetype of the Antichrist, it is now…Read this book with an open mind. Good and evil are real forces in our world. ~~ Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit and Conversations with the Divine.
For immediate access to Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election, order the e-book with 10 full-color prints from Amazon HERE.
To get a print-on-demand paperback copy with black & white images, order from Amazon HERE or IUniverse HERE.
To receive a limited-edition, full-color paperback copy, order from MatthewFox.org HERE.
Order the audiobook HERE for immediate download.
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
In A Spirituality Named Compassion, Matthew Fox delivers a profound exploration of the meaning and practice of compassion. Establishing a spirituality for the future that promises personal, social, and global healing, Fox marries mysticism with social justice, leading the way toward a gentler and more ecological spirituality and an acceptance of our interdependence which is the substratum of all compassionate activity.
“Well worth our deepest consideration…Puts compassion into its proper focus after centuries of neglect.” –The Catholic Register
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth
Fox’s spirituality weds the healing and liberation found in North American Creation Spirituality and in South American Liberation Theology. Creation Spirituality challenges readers of every religious and political persuasion to unite in a new vision through which we learn to honor the earth and the people who inhabit it as the gift of a good and just Creator.
“A watershed theological work that offers a common ground for religious seekers and activists of all stripes.” — Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice.
“I am reading Liberating Gifts for the People of the Earth by Matt Fox. He is one that fills my heart and mind for new life in spite of so much that is violent in our world.” ~ Sister Dorothy Stang.
3 thoughts on “Aquinas’s Medicine for Greed–Listen up, y’all!”
My last two posts here reflect the thoughts of Aquinas. ‘The world’ changes when we change ourselves.
We should not give ‘lip service’ to the Great Commission and the Glory of God and then eat from the trough of doom and gloom, because that is what we are being fed every day. What is the ‘fire of purification’ asking us to do as we rebuild, rebirth and transform? — BB.
Try to pray in gratitude for 10 to 30 minutes throughout the day. Just be grateful and give thanks to the Glory of God. Meditate once per day and look within and stay focussed on the within where all of the universe resides. We spend far too much time fretting on every temporal and external sensory objects and phenomena. If we do not pursue a deeper connection and communion with our omnipotent and omnipresent Creator, we will be overwhelmed by the dark forces of the world. This is not to hide. We are ‘not of the world’ and need to understand more deeply what that means. — BB.
It always amazes us when people protest corporate greed when, on the other hand, they support their systems by purchasing the items they sell to them. They also perpetuate the illusion of their separation from others, the environment, and all that is by the lifestyle choices they make. What do you people think you are going to accomplish? The only way to prevent corporate greed from affecting one’s life, destroying the environment, and causing great suffering around the world is to live in a manner where you do not need them. Corporations laugh at your protest because they know they provide all the stuff you need to survive. Get serious, people, and become the change you want to see in the world, as Gandhi advised.
Yes! Our Eternal Souls’ eternal spiritual journeys of Conscious growth and evolution are ongoing in this earthly dimension of duality and other spiritual interdimensions of nonduality. Our SOURCE~CO-CREATOR’S SPIRIT of DIVINE LOVE~WISDOM Is always Present within and among Us Loving and Guiding Us with Truth, Peace, Justice, Healing, Forgiveness, Transformation, Creativity, Beauty, Joy, Compassion, LOVING DIVERSE ONENESS… in the Sacred Process of the ETERNAL PRESENT Moment….