Financial advisers would say my wife, Donna, and I are in our “High Income and Savings Years.” We have jobs with benefits. All of our children are adults and out of the house (for now, at least). It’s time to really stockpile money for retirement, which I’d enjoy starting sometime before I hit 75.   High income. And saving. Hmm …

Someone forgot to tell that to the local mechanic who discovered Donna’s car needed four new struts, a new boot on one axle and four new tires. Someone also forgot to tell Uncle Sam, who would like us to pay all the taxes we owe from last year. Someone forgot to explain that to the gutters that fell off the front of the house during a recent storm.In addition, someone should have warned us about that stuff a month ago – before we planned an Orlando vacation, with money down for the flights and rental house. That little cushion we had in savings? Disappeared in the blink of an eye.

It’s supposed to be easier than this. We aren’t frivolous. We don’t live beyond our means, drive new cars every two years, jet to Europe or the Caribbean regularly or ever. We’re there for family and friends when they need us. We give to our church and to favorite charities.  We worship at Mass every Sunday, read Scriptures, pray in good times and bad. We believe.

“There is one who scatters, and yet increases all the more, and there is one who withholds what is justly due, and yet it results only in want. The generous man will be prosperous, and he who waters will himself be watered.” (Proverbs 11:24-25)

“Give generously to him and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this, the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to.” (Deuteronomy 15:10)

We water. We don’t have a grudging heart. We love.

Protestant televangelists such as Creflo Dollar and Joel Osteen make a lot of money selling Christians on the idea that God wants them to be prosperous, to have big bank accounts and all the nice things money can buy. Heck, who are we kidding: There are plenty of American Catholics who opt into that line of thought as well, people who think that since they go to Mass weekly (maybe daily), pray sometimes (maybe a lot of times), give to charities (maybe a lot to charities) and have found the kind of career success that has brought fame and fortune, well, God has blessed them. God loves them. God rewards their faith.

So, does God not love me? Why hasn’t He blessed me and rewarded me in a way that means I don’t have to save for more than a month before getting new tires and new gutters?   What’s wrong with my faith? For that matter, what’s wrong with the faith of schoolteachers and landscapers, car mechanics and gutter-hangers, people in other countries who assemble toys 60 hours a week and starving children in Africa?

When I hear about others’ paychecks, bank accounts, living conditions and daily menus I’ve got to wonder what would happen if they just believed in a better way? Maybe they need a deeper faith in order to find themselves blessed with abundant prosperity.

Recently, at my monthly Secular Carmelites meeting, a priest named Father Tom Wyrsch talked to us about the spirituality of St. John of the Cross. Upon his entrance into the seminary several decades ago, Father Tom has immersed himself in John’s writings. He hinted that the 16th-century Carmelite saint, a Doctor of the Church, believed in the “prosperity gospel.” Sort of.

In “The Sayings Of Light and Love,” a collection of spiritual advice he gave nuns and friars, John advised: “Take God for your bridegroom and friend, and walk with him continually; and you will not sin and will learn to love, and the things you must do will work out prosperously for you.”  Remember, Father Tom said, those words were given to monks and nuns, not exactly people who would then assume they would become millionaires because of their devotion to the Lord. John doesn’t mean that we will prosper materially, rather, that the things we do will work out prosperously.

Donna and I really aren’t crying poverty. So the house needs gutters; we have a house. So the car needs repairs; we have two cars. So we have education debt for Donna and our children; we all received advanced education and have jobs. So there never seems to be enough time in the day; in addition to jobs, we have family and personal apostolates. He blesses our efforts, though, with fruitfulness. Indeed, even though the world might not understand, He blesses us. Maybe we all have to understand prosperity in a different light?

Mike Eisenbath has been married to Donna for 30 years; they have four adult children and two grandsons. He was an award-winning sportswriter for 23 years, including 18 at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch with duties that included covering the St. Louis Cardinals and Major League Baseball. Severe depression forced him out of that career. He continues to write, with a monthly column in the St. Louis Review, his www.eisenbath.com website and several other Catholic websites featuring reflections on topics such as his faith and mental illness. Mike is a frequent speaker and radio guest involving those subjects. Among his three books is Hence My Eyes Are Turned Toward You: Confronting Depression With Faith and the Prayer of Jehoshaphat. He also is in formation with the Secular Carmelites.

One Reply to “Genuine Biblical Prosperity”

  1. Thanks for this reflection, Mike. There is that strong pull of the world to conform in many ways to its thoughts and temptations and financial security is a big one.
    Thanks also to the CWG for keeping us connected to one another as we all struggle to fight the good fight and to write about it from a Catholic perspective.
    Greetings from another Secular Carmelite who grew up in the St. Louis area. Have a wonderful trip and put that car out of mind for a bit!

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