Content with a sufficiency

 

Even though he only had an eighth-grade education, my father was probably the smartest man I’ve ever known.  What he lacked in formal education he more than made up for in common sense and practical advice.  One of the most important lessons I learned from my dad was that “happiness isn’t found so much in what you have as in what you give”.   As I read St. Paul’s first letter to Timothy today, it sounded so much like the advice my dad gave me (1 Timothy 6:2-12).

Through his advice to Timothy, Paul tells us to be “content with a sufficiency” and reminded that if “we have food and clothing we have all that we need.”  Of course, we don’t swallow such advice easily, especially in a culture of consumerism that religiously trains us never to be content but to always want more and more; in a culture of consumerism, to be “content with a sufficiency” seems downright heretical.

It’s so easy to lose our way, to spend hefty portions of our lives sidetracked.  This happens when we let lesser goods (such as wealth and possessions) become more important than greater goods (such as God and other people).  But when we give lesser goods more attention than they deserve we lose all sense of what truly matters, all sense of what is genuinely valuable and good.  Even worse, while we may think money and material things will help us get ahead in life, if we set our hearts on loving them rather than God and our neighbors, we’ll slowly but surely destroy ourselves.  As Saint Paul emphatically reminds us: “Those who want to be rich are falling into temptation, and a trap. They are letting themselves be captured by foolish and harmful desires” which lead not to life and security, but “to ruin and destruction.”

Less is often better than more.  We’re called to embrace the simplicity of life not only because when we do we’re able to apprise the true value of everything, and not only because when some of us live with less the poor and destitute are able to live at all; but also because if we’re willing to be “content with a sufficiency,” we’ll finally discover where true life can be found.  As we’re reminded in the Gospel, it comes in following Jesus, joyfully “proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God” as we do (Luke 8:1-3).