Archive for August 25th, 2008
Mammon All Around Us
“Measure your needs not by the world’s measures, but by the ell or by the King’s Arm. Let your standard not be Babylon, or Thebes, or Paris, or New York, or London – but Bethlehem, Nazareth, Capharnaum, Calvary.”
Fr. Vincent McNabb, The Church and the Land, A Call to Contemplatives
Mammon is the new pink. He is most everywhere we go, and he is certainly required company in most anything we do. A troublesome tag-along, but he is with us nevertheless.
What is sorely unfortunate is that many either don’t recognize his presence, or have merely grown accustomed to his stench. Folks pass by evidence of his plague, but they are too busy listening to their MP3s to pay any mind. They wear his clothes, eat his foods, drive his cars, listen to his iTunes, and play on his $600 Playstation 3, all the while never coming to grips with the ever-increasing fact that they live, move, and have their being in a system designed by Mammon.
As much as one may wish to count it off as mere ignorance, I fear this would be a tad bit naïve. It may possibly be a simple matter of desensitization, but I think it to be much more complex. If I may, I would say it is within the ballpark of blissful self-deception. People are generally aware of our money grubbing, pocket spoiling system. The issue at hand is that they could care less. Like children rushing to the van of a devilish stranger offering them candy, so we rush to Mammon.
But even this analogy will not suffice, if for no other reason than that the child is unaware of the impending pillaging of her being and dignity. We, on the other hand, know this all too well, making the analogy more one of prostitution than that of rape. Who can rape the willing? Human dignity is sacrificed for petty lemon drops and lollipops, and little more.
Is it foolish to wish for a day when people would banish Mammon in exchange for the all things humane and dignified? Don’t past experiences demonstrate that men and women often exchange the obviously bad for the disguised worse? Even if this is the case, and there is good reason to think it is, we would nevertheless be both foolish and unrighteous to sign ourselves and the world over to the eternal dominion of Mammon. Even if our progress is small, which it most likely will be, and even if it may be viewed by many as trivial, which it most likely will be, we must never be ashamed of or disheartened by having to tear down a fortress one brick at a time. But this can only happen if we begin opening our eyes and ears so that we may more clearly see and hear the sounds of Mammon all around us. Pay close attention, my friends, for the beast may be nearer than you realize.
