RUTTER: Values, Virtues

Past being able to jerry-rig his 30-year-old tractor for another season, my husband bought a new one last year.

We put so much down on it and made our first installment on the rest of the payments. Budgeting like most people who can’t afford to pay in cash, we figure.

It tickles me that St. Paul uses “budgeting” to teach the Ephesians that the reward of believing in God is to be “sealed with the promised holy Spirit, which is the first installment of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s possession, to the praise of his glory.” (Ephesians 1:13-14)

St. Luke goes on to affirm that to God, believers “are worth more than many sparrows.” (Luke 12:7)

Then we go on to a passage from Matthew’s Gospel, which finds the Pharisees setting a trap for Jesus, asking him whether or not taxes should be paid to Caesar.

When the Romans admit that it’s Caesar’s image on their coin Jesus responds, "Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God." (Matthew 22:21)

These Scripture passages aren’t really about money. Rather, they are meant to make us question the world’s way of operating versus heaven’s: man’s versus God’s.

Hanging out there are three “what” questions come to mind for our reflection:

1.) What does the world offer? Tied to the world, we can acquire power, riches, stuff and more stuff. When we are — as the saying goes — on top of the world, it feels good to know that people admire and seek us out, we have money in the bank, good jobs, nice homes, cars, clothes and the like. The challenge is that pride seeps in, and we begin to think all that we have and are is because we are superior to, smarter than, and more deserving than others. Bit by bit, as we become puffed up with self, we cease to recognize God’s presence or mastery over our lives. Self-contained, we fall when the world’s offerings crash around our well-constructed facade.

2.) What does God offer? Rather than coins, objects or ego that diminish with use and time, God freely offers us 33 everlasting virtues, categorized as the Theological, Cardinal, Gifts of the Holy Spirit, Fruits of the Holy Spirit and Capital or Lively Virtues (ascensionpress.com). Each of these virtues counters a human vice that the evil one uses to ensnare us, to keep us from our God who loves us. Let’s challenge one another to look them up, make a list of them and hang that list from a place we can see them each morning upon waking and evening’s end. As a teaser, the 12 Fruits of the Holy Spirit are charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, generosity, modesty, and chastity. (Galatians 5:22-23) Each is a beautiful reminder of who we are meant to be as God’s beloved children.

3.) What is the focus of my life, my trajectory, my final aim? This is the question each of us is challenged to ask ourselves daily, or sometimes moment by moment! I’d like to think my aim is move beyond — or even abandon — the course I set to meet my needs and desires and focus on doing God’s will. To do his will, however, requires me to make my “first installment” prayer, to truly hear God’s voice and follow where he leads. Not only follow where He leads but do so with conviction and joy.

I invite you to share your thoughts on budgeting for this world versus our worth in God’s eyes and these “what” questions with me.

And so I pray: Dear Lord, help me to stay centered on You. Release me from the desire to possess that which is fleeting — whether material goods or ones borne of vanity and desire. Fill me with the virtues of joy, peace and love rooted in the Holy Spirit that I may spread them only.