Wise, Healthy and, Yes, Wealthy.

CHRISTIANITY; GOD; JESUS Christ; BANKING industry; MONEY; WEALTH

This article explores the place of money in a life devout to God. Money is a subject that has always held endless difficulty and fascination for me. At 20 I entered a convent, embracing a sacred vow of poverty and refusing to have anything to do with owning money. At 38, I left that order and had to face financial reality again. For some inexplicable reason, money had always been a wrestling partner for me. Somehow, somewhere and by someone, I had been formed to think that money and God could not coexist. It never crossed my mind to see all the money that now flowed through my hands as God's gift. Jesus did not disdain material creation. Maybe his pockets were empty, but reading him deeply, who can say that he was speaking against having money? And so I came, in my own way, to understand more clearly what it meant to live in God's abundance. I now celebrate the ordinary gifts sown around me, the chopped parsley on the kitchen counter, my flower-laden monks' table in front of our wide garden window, the technological toys in my office that enable me to write these thoughts, and yes, my bank account.