The Disciples' Best Attitude Toward Wealth

Friday of the 29th Week Integral 2025

I’ve run into a lot of people who think they know Scripture and will quote St. Paul by saying “money is the root of all evil.” If you paid attention to the first reading, you know that he, acting as Timothy’s mentor and supervisor, wrote “the love of money is the root of all evil.” The Gk is f??a?????a [philarguria] and the first syllable, phil, is well known as the root “love,” like philosophy, the love of wisdom. The root of all evil is avarice, loving money, and that violates the first and greatest commandment, “you shall love the Lord with your whole heart, mind, soul and strength.” It also gets in the way of loving our neighbor as ourselves, does it not? More on that later.

In the first century, the early Christian churches around the Mediterranean held Scripture to be the foundation for belief, but in the first twenty or thirty years after Christ’s Ascension, the written word was what we call the OT. The letters of St. Paul were circulated from one place to another, and there were probably some collections of the words of Jesus and stories about His life, death and resurrection. As we see in Paul’s letter to Timothy, there were some who tried to corrupt correct teaching. He writes, “Whoever teaches something different and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the religious teaching is conceited, understanding nothing, and has a morbid disposition for arguments and verbal disputes.” Such people also went around to the churches gathering money for their own use. Paul continues: “If we have food and clothing, we shall be content with that.” He was imitating Jesus, whose earthly ministry was certainly financed by contributions from believers like Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna and others. But Jesus was never flush with gold and silver, and His apostles weren’t either. They remembered clearly that Judas Iscariot was the early treasurer but recalled most vividly that he was a thief. Money is for basic support of those in the ministry, and the rest is to be shared in charity and justice.

In fact, our psalmist today, from the school of Korah, is an early reminder of the Jewish understanding of the dangers of wealth that has been hoarded for personal power. He sings, “Fear not when a man grows rich, when the wealth of his house becomes great, For when he dies, he shall take none of it; his wealth shall not follow him down.” And that means it won’t follow him down to the nether world at his death. We don’t even get to take the flowers given at our funerals.

It is true that the poor in spirit are blessed. While they live on earth, they don’t have to worry about their possessions being stolen or rusted or used into obsolescence. They use wealth to keep their families fed and clothed and housed, build a modest retirement fund, and share the rest with the Church, the poor, the missionaries. They build up wealth in heaven where it counts, where we are all destined by God to be. Blessed be His holy Name.