NEUROSIS OF POSSESSING
One of the most valuable offerings of the Gospel for contemporary people is that of helping us live with a more human sense in the midst of a society that is sick with «the neurosis of possessing».
The model of society and the living together that configures our daily life is based not on what each person is, but on what each person has. What’s important is «have» money, prestige, power, authority… The one who possesses this, gets ahead and triumphs in life. The one who doesn’t reach some of this, remains discredited.
From his first years, the child is educated more to «have» than to «be». What he’s interested in is being capacitated in order to some day «have» a position, some earnings, a name, security. Thus almost unconsciously, we prepare new generations for competition and rivalry.
We live in a model of society that easily impoverishes people. The demand of affection, tenderness and friendship that beats within all human beings is taken care of by objects. Communication ends up substituted by the possession of things.
People get used to valuing themselves by what they possess. And in this way run the risk of going about being incapacitated for love, tenderness, generous service, help in solidarity, the gratuitous sense of life. This society doesn’t help to grow in friendship, solidarity and concern about the rights of the other.
That’s why Jesus’ invitation to value the person from her capacity of service and solidarity gains special renown in our days. The greatness of life is measured in its final terms not by the knowledge one possesses or by the goods she has succeeded in accumulating, or by the success that she has been able to reach, but by the capacity of serving and helping others to live more humanly.
How many humble people, like the widow of the Gospel, support the humanization of our society more with her simple life of solidarity and generous help for those in need, than many protagonists of social, political, or religious life who are skillful defenders of their own interests, protagonism and position.
José Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
