Pints With Aquinas - Can Rich People Go to Heaven? | Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P.

Episode Date: October 6, 2024

💌 Support The Show: https://mattfradd.locals.com Father looks as Matthew 19:24 and examines why it is so hard for the riches to go to heaven. 📖 Fr. Pine's Book: https://bit.ly/3lEsP8F 🖥️ Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ 🟢 Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/pintswithaquinas 👕 Merch: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com 🚫 FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/ 🔵 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd  

Hello, my name is Father Gregory Pine and I am a Dominican friar of the province of St. Joseph. I teach at the Dominican House of Studies and I work for the Thomistic Institute and this is Pines for the Coinas. So in this episode, I would like to talk about whether rich people can go to heaven, which I suppose on the one hand sounds a little bit silly because all people can go to heaven. We read in 1st Timothy 2, 4, God desires that all be saved and come to knowledge of the truth. So God is giving us each a grace sufficient to salvation. But the question is whether riches poses a peculiar particular

obstacle to that. Because you know on the other hand our Lord has some stern words reserved for the rich or some stern admonitions, I supposed, reserved for the rich. And we shouldn't get in the habit of explaining away the sacred page because that'll often put us in a strange situation. So let's take the question seriously and see what we can derive from it. Here we go. Okay, so there are any number of representative passages in the sacred scriptures concerning riches and concerning the disposition of those who have riches, but I thought I'd just pick one from the Gospel of Matthew, specifically from chapter 19, verses 23 through 26, which read, and Jesus said to his disciples, truly I say to you, it will be hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again, I tell you, it is easier

for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. When the disciples heard this they were greatly astonished saying, who then can be saved? But Jesus looked at them and said to them, with men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible. So you probably heard an interpretation of this passage according to its setting in life. So Jesus in the first century is describing, at least in part, the physical kind of dimensions of the city of Jerusalem. And so you know that the city of Jerusalem has various ports or gates, one of which is called the Eye of the Needle, and this particular

one is very narrow. So if you were to come in with a lot of camels weighed down or burdened by a lot of goods you would have to take those things off the camel's backs so that the camels could get through that narrow gate so the idea here is that we ourselves have to be unburdened or have to be distanced from our riches if we are going to enter into the kingdom of God. And so that kind of first century setting gives us an appreciation for the universal application, which is to say that we can't rely on riches if we are going to depend on God. And so then what is it that kind of stumbles up or what is it that might otherwise

entrap the rich person on the way to salvation? How is it that his or her riches pose an obstacle or a hindrance to a relationship with Jesus Christ and to salvation in God? So I think that I just want to talk about a couple of sociological reasons and then a couple of theological reasons and then acknowledge ways that we ourselves can be on the lookout or that we ourselves

can be in a kind of spiritual discipline or training to avoid these pitfalls. So obviously, a rich person, by virtue of his or her riches, has access to the goods of the earth. What is lacking can be bought. And so, the individual might not experience much in the way of need. Now there are things that are going to visit all of us, irrespective of riches, like sickness, like misfortune, like loss, like death, but with riches you can avoid a lot more of those things or at least you can seem to address a lot more of those things. So on the one hand, perhaps you're going to experience, if you're a rich person, you're going to experience your

need a little less acutely whether that's fear like physical or emotional Psychological spiritual you're just going to experience that need a little less acutely or you might have less occasion to experience that need Acutely and then the disposition is like okay when I do experience need I can probably spend money and then address it right? So I can probably just throw some money at the problem and hope for a quick solution That's a temptation or a kind of tendency. And I think also there's the real risk of inordinate ease or comfort. So there's something to human life being a struggle. There's something to human life being a struggle. What do you mean, Father Gregory? Well, I think a lot of the imagery that's deployed in the sacred scriptures are just in the western canon more broadly, is that if we're

going to make it through life,'re gonna have to make some progress and that progress is going to require of us some effort and that effort is going to shape us right so it's gonna heal us and grow us and here we're thinking about the effects that the grace of God has on our life and how we're meant to consent to and cooperate with that and so like a lot of our human maturation is described in terms of the difficulty that we're meant to confront and overcome. But with riches it becomes easier, well, to live easily, to live comfortably. And so some of that kind of struggle will make a little less sense. This is not like a a universal malediction, but it's just to say simply that with riches one can make of his life

or her life something a little easier, something a little more comfortable, and so then the struggle which gives rise to the maturation, the healing and growth which lie in store for each Christian in response to that offer of grace may make a little less sense. St. Thomas will distinguish humans from angels. He'll say that angels make their way to their end by one movement, whereas humans make their way to their end by one movement, whereas humans, they make their way to their end by many movements. And so there's this kind of dramatic sense to human life, or this kind of narrative sense to human life. And a lot of that is a further up and further in, or a kind of strength to strength of overcoming obstacles and confronting hindrances.

But again, with riches, maybe that's a little less so the case. Okay. The other thing I'd like to kind of point out is that for people who have money, they're often surrounded by other people who want their money and those other people who want their money tend to be ingratiating or fawning and like heaping all kinds of praise on them so that they can get their money. And so if you are rich, you have riches. You don't necessarily have anything else. Like you don't necessarily have grace, virtue, gifts of the Holy Spirit, beatitudes, fruits of the Spirit, the things that really matter in life. But you have a bunch of

people telling you that you're awesome and you might tend to believe those other people in thinking that you are awesome. And when you believe the narrative, it's easier just to kind of get swept away. So I think there's a real risk to that because it's harder to rely upon those in your immediate circle to give you the truth, right? And to furnish you with the good because they have other ends. They're inclined to make of that relationship something useful for themselves or pleasant for themselves rather than noble and beautiful for both parties. Okay, so those would be some sociological reasons. Access to the goods of the earth kind of buffers us from or isolates us from our need, which isutive of human life we're just needy creatures and we need to be in

constant touch with our neediness and then there's a kind of sense in which there's an ease or a comfort that creeps into life and makes of this strength the strength or you know glory to glory dimension a little less clear to us so the narrative dimension of human life a little less clear and then once surrounded by people who want that money, they're going to tend to tell us things about ourselves which may be a little overblown, embellished, or otherwise false. And it's a temptation to believe the narrative, to think of oneself that you're doing great. So there's that.

But I think we can go deeper than the sociological, right? That is to say we can treat the properly theological. And I think that what's at the heart of our human condition is this dependency. Okay, so we are creatures, God is our creator, and what it means to be created is to depend for your very being, life, and understanding on God at all times. So at all times God is giving us being and giving us agency, supporting us in being, supporting us in agency. And we have nothing apart from him, precisely nothing. And that's a disposition, like a kind of recognition, acknowledgement that we have to cultivate continually because there's a kind of

temptation for fallen man to wander off and think that he invented himself or created himself, and then to arrogate to himself all of the goods which he sees he's accumulated, saying like, oh wow, look what I did, look at what I did did look at what I did look at what I did whereas there's a kind of I don't know recognition or acknowledgement with a creaturely state or whatever for a creature it's proper to recognize this kind of dependency and then to live out of that dependency with a kind of sense of abandonment and so when you have riches, it can be harder to recognize this fact because you're probably enterprising, you know, you're

probably quite endeavoring, and so you've accumulated, you've amassed, you've done the things which won you the riches, and so you tend to think of your life as your own production, or you might, I should say. I mean, a lot of these formulations I'm gonna end up sounding a little too censorious, so I apologize if any of these things grate against your sensibilities. Nevertheless, there's a confrontation to be had with the truth. So I think there's that, you know? Like, there has to be this effort on the part of the individual to recognize that God is Father, that He is Provident, that He gives good gifts, and

that everything that we have is from He gives good gifts and that everything that we have is from Him. So I think that that ought to be getting us a disposition or a kind of spirit of gratitude. Every good and perfect gift comes down to us from the Father of lights, says the letter of James. Or Paul asks in 1 Corinthians 4, what do you have that you have not received? If therefore you have received it, why do you boast as if it were your own? I think here it's helpful just to spend a moment in treating the logic of the virtues. So we'll talk about two categories of virtues. What we call the

acquired virtues and then what we call the infused virtues. The acquired virtues are those ones that you build up by repetition, you know, by habitual action. The infused virtues are the ones that God pours into our hearts, the ones that he kind of does in us without us. Nevertheless, we can consent to and cooperate with those things. When St. Thomas describes the acquired virtues, he says they're imperfect virtues. They're virtues as it were, secundum quid. All right.

When he talks about the infused virtues, he says these are perfect virtues. These are virtues simply so called simplicitare. Because these ones have charity for their heart and soul, whereas the other ones don't necessarily. So I think that when it comes to the accumulation of riches, often you see a coming together of certain virtues in the individual. An industriousness, a craftiness, not in the bad sense of craftiness, but like a kind of acute shrewdness when it comes to business dealings, a kind of creativity, right? A kind of application of the spirit to this particular task. And those are good things, but they're often enough imperfect virtues. That is to say, they are virtues

as it were, virtues secundum quid. But what really matters most in life are the other ones, the infused virtues, the perfect virtues, the virtues simply so called simplicitere. And so what makes of our life something truly wonderful, truly beautiful is charity, is love. So it has to be informed by or completed by love, and specifically love of God and neighbor, theological love. And so there can be a kind of tendency when one is really good at life in the one sense to think that one is really good at life in the other sense, in the full sense, in the complete sense. And that's not necessarily the case. So in cultivating a certain gratitude we recognize that every good and perfect gift comes down to us from the father of lights. Yes, I may have been blessed in liking the order of nature or nurture or the efforts that I put forward, but what matters most is the kind of non-resistance that we show before the gifts of God, which is more like a matter of consent and cooperation. And

when we can cultivate an appreciation for these infused virtues, faith, hope, charity, infused prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance, when we can see that they have come to us from God, then we can also see that the acquired virtues have come to us from God. That even our nature, nurture, and efforts, even our industry, and shrewdness, our enterprising spirit, those all come from God. They're all a gift. And so it gives us the spirit whereby we can recognize like apart from him I am nothing and less than nothing, less than less than nothing. And I think it's only that that really saves us from arrogating whatever to ourselves as if they were our own and saying yeah I'm a great guy, yeah I'm a swell fella,

whatever. Okay? So I think that we realize that, yeah, if I am good, it is because God is good and God alone is good. So there's a kind of sense in which in appreciating our created state and cultivating gratitude, we can be spared the silly thought that we've really done something apart from God, or the temptation to wander off from God and to congratulate ourselves, and then to believe that everyone says, you know, that that we are great and that we are thus and such and blah blah blah and whatever. Okay, I don't want to sound too cynical, you know, because never mind, but there's a sense in which the Lord is gratuitous in his movements, the Lord is gratuitous in his dealings with men because he is, right? And who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been his counselor? He apportions his gifts in the way that he sees fit for the upbuilding of his kingdom in ways that remain mysterious to us.

And yet we can begin to sympathize with them or enter into them insofar as the Lord illumines our minds and draws our hearts in the theological life. And I think that in recognizing this, we're more on the lookout for what he's doing in every life. Be that life great or small, be that life rich or poor, grandiose or otherwise humble. And I think that you'll meet rich people who think they're great and whatever, it's yada yada, nuts and such. But you'll meet rich people who have a genuine appreciation for this and who display a real interest in other individuals, regardless of how important they might be thought or how important they might seem. And that's awesome because there's something there. There's something there, there. God is doing something in each human life and we need to be on the lookout for that. We need to cultivate a

sensitivity to that so that way we can thank Him for that in our own lives and in the lives of those whom we meet. So I think there's, yeah, the admonition here is not just to the rich but to the powerful and to the preeminent, you know, those who are raised up. Don't think for a second that you're being raised up is because you're great. It's because God's great. And if you are raised up, it's because you're raised up in service. It's because you're raised up to be more sensitive to, more alert to what the Lord is doing in your life and in the lives of others. And truth be told, it is unclear what the Lord is doing, but we trust that it's for glory, that it's for salvation, and we try to respond to that.

Like you think about the hierarchy, the hierarchy of the church. Like why is one raised up as a priest or as a bishop or as the pope? It's in service. It's so that one's life would be poured out as a living sacrifice so as to nourish, so as to feed the people of God with the good gifts that they need, so that you can mediate the prayers and sacrifices of the people and so that you can bestow divine gifts as God makes them present. So any riches power or preeminence is ultimately for love, you know, it's to be made manifest in love. And St. Thomas has an appreciation for

this, you know, in his indebtedness to Aristotle. He'll recognize there are certain virtues which you only really see displayed in the utmost sense, like magnanimity and magnificence. If you're gonna be after great honors, you know, or great things worthy of great honors because they're great, then you have to have access to those things. Or if you're gonna be magnificence, like spending great sums for great projects, you have to have access to those things. So if you have access to those things, there's a greater responsibility that that entails. But it's a sweet responsibility because the Lord has seen fit to work in and through you in this way, unto his glory and for

your salvation. So I think at the end of the day, it convicts us as to our createdness, the need for a certain gratitude, and the mystery of the gratuity with which the Lord deals with his creatures. So can the rich be saved? Yes, paradoxically it seems harder and yet that ought to make us more alert to his workings in our life so that we can respond with greater generosity, with greater abandon. So that is what I hope to share. I hope it is of some service to you in your life and in your ministry. So this is Pines with Aquinas.

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