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Question

Dear Father,

What should the attitude of a catholic person towards perfectly good, but not indispensable things be? If a person who seeks and enjoys these things with moderation, without turning away from God, but perhaps seeking in them an extra opportunity to love him, does this person commit a sin?

Answer

Dear son,

1. All perfectly good things can be steps to ascend to God and love him more and more.

In the Liturgy of the Church we always repeat the words we read in Sacred Scripture: “The heavens and the earth are full of your glory”.

Everything the Lord puts before us he does so that he speaks to us about Him, leads us to Him and unites us with Him.

2. Precisely in the second reading of today’s Office of Readings (Friday of the fifth week of ordinary time) we are reminded that how we must look at the things from this world, is rather by considering the realities of which they are an image and a reminder.

Saint Leo the Great, Pope, said that as with the bodily sense of sight we see the material light, the same way we should embrace with all the ardor of our heart the true light that illuminates every man who comes into this world, that is, Jesus Christ (Gv 1,9).

He wrote: “My dear friends, we do not want to incite or persuade you to despise the works of God, or to see something contrary to your faith in the things that the God of goodness has created good, but we only want to exhort you, so that you may know how to use every creature and all the beauty of this world in a wise and balanced way. In fact, as the Apostle says: «The visible things are transitory, it is the invisible things that are eternal» (2 Cor 4,18)” (Speech for the Nativity of the Lord, 7, 2).

3. Everything in this world speaks for God.

Food speaks for God by reminding us of what the Lord said: “Get busy not for the food that does not last, but for the food that remains for eternal life and that the Son of man will give you. Because the Father, God, has put his seal on him” (Gv 6,27).

After all, if the food belonging to this world is agreeable, how much more agreeable must be the One whose food of this world is nothing but a very pale echo. In the Sacred Scripture we read: “Taste and see how good the Lord is; blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him” (Sal 34,9).

Water speaks for God, because it symbolizes the Holy Spirit who comes to bring freshness and fervor into our life. This is why Jesus, during the Feast of Tabernacles, remembering the mysterious water that Moses made gush out of the rock standing upright, said: «If anyone is thirsty, those who believe in me come to me and drink. As the Scripture says: From her womb rivers of living water will flow». He said this of the Holy Spirit that the believers in him would receive” (Gv 7,37-39).

4. God made everything that exists to be a gift of his love for us.

Therefore, from the things of this world we must continually ascend to Him, Who gave them to us.

In the book of Wisdom we read: “Truly fools by nature are all men who lived in ignorance of God. And from the visible goods they did not recognize who He is, they did not recognize the craftsman, even though they considered His works. But either the fire or the wind or the thin air or the starry vault or the rushing water or the luminaries of the sky are considered as gods, rulers of the world.

If, astonished by their beauty, they have taken them for gods, let them think how superior their Lord is, because the author of beauty Himself created them.

If they are struck by their power and activity, let them think from this how much more powerful is the one who formed them. In fact, the author is known by analogy from the greatness and beauty of creatures” (Sap 13,1-5).

And in Sirach: “How lovable are all His works! And hardly a spark can be observed” (Sir 42,22).

This is why St. Paul affirms that “His invisible perfections, that is, His eternal power and divinity, are contemplated and understood by the creation of the world through the works He accomplished” (Rm 1,20).

5. Theologians say that it is precisely the gift of the Holy Spirit that is called “science” to make us ascend from the things below, to love and contemplation of God and celestial realities.

And that is why believers do not cling to the things of this world, however good and lovable, because they are only a sign of the visible and eternal ones.

St. Paul reminds us of this when he says: “We do not fix our gaze on visible things, but on invisible ones. The visible things are transitory, it is the invisible things that are eternal” (2 Cor 4,18).

6. Being morbidly attached to the things of this world is what induces us to love them as they were our God and our everything.

But this is the devil’s deception.

7. The gift of science also grants us the capacity to accept the sacrifices and sufferings that life entails, because “the momentary, light weight of our tribulation gives us an immeasurable and eternal quantity of glory” (2 Cor 4,17).

8. Therefore, everything cooperates to our union with the Lord, so that we can exclaim with St. Augustine: And heaven and earth and all the creatures in them on every side cry out to me to love you (“omnia clamant ut amem te”) and they do not cease to tell everyone so that they have no excuse” (Rm 1,20)” (The Confessions, X,6,8).

I wish you always to have that supernatural gaze that fills you with light and peace, I assure you of my prayers and I bless you.

Father Angelo

Translated by Rossella Silvestri

Proof-edited by Sara Bellei