Hadjadj Resurrection

Experience Life in the Risen Christ
1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-1-941709-23-8
Verlag: Magnificat
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 180 Seiten

A must-read for anyone who wants to experience the Kingdom of Heaven through daily living. • Twelve profound and sometimes playful reflections on Jesus' appearances after his resurrection that show us how to embrace life by walking in the light of the Resurrection • Through his focus on the Resurrection, Hadjadj brings new appreciation for our relationships with others, service, food, money, Scripture, mercy, faith, love, and more. • An ideal gift for Catholics and all who wish to understand the mystery of the Resurrection. • Foreword by Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, o.f.m. cap. , Archbishop of Philadelphia.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hadjadj, Fabrice

Leseproben

I
YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE! Some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests all that had taken place. And when they had assembled with the elders and taken counsel, they gave a sum of money to the soldiers and said, “Tell people, ‘His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ And if this comes to the governor’s ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” So they took the money and did as they were directed; and this story has been spread among the Jews to this day. Matthew 28:11-15   People always mention Judas’ thirty pieces of silver, never the soldiers’ sum of money (more precisely, the Greek text reads “a sufficient number of silver pieces”). Now which of these two pecuniary arrangements is more serious—the one that handed Christ over to the cross or the one that obliterates his glory? Isn’t the second more extreme than the first? Doesn’t money show a greater power to fascinate when it offers to betray a resurrected man, and not just a mortal? It is fitting, in any case, to linger over this final episode involving finances, which is also Saint Matthew’s last word on the subject. Earlier, when Jesus had sent the Apostles on a mission, he had commanded them: Take no gold, nor silver, nor copper in your belts (Mt 10:9). Even before that, on the Mount, he had declared: You cannot serve God and mammon (Mt 6:24). We could not have thought of it on our own: isn’t money an instrument, and isn’t it a question of making “good use” of it? It is at our service, and we should not serve it. It can’t buy happiness, no doubt, but “it contributes to it.” Why does Christ liken it to a sort of spiteful person? Why does he impute intentions to it, to the point that he describes it as “unjust,” or, in some translations, deceitful (Lk 16:11)? If it is only a tool of commerce, how could it change into the boss? I’m willing to admit that we have less of a grip on a banknote than on a hammer: it is a paper instrument that tends to slip through our fingers. It is nevertheless a tool, one that is more effective than a hammer at almsgiving, buying fine lingerie, or even shutting someone’s trap…. After all, wouldn’t Christ have been more prudent had he made his emissaries employees and given them a little pocket money for their petty travel expenses, to make them a little more independent too (like our politicians)? Don’t tell me that the man who could multiply loaves so easily could not multiply coins! How is it that he does not do what alchemy has always dreamed of: to transmute mud into gold? How is it that he, who has no fear of touching lepers, has this absurd fear of being contaminated by money? Fortunately, some churchmen have made progress in this area. Isn’t it necessary to have the means to preach that God is great? And yet, in the passage we are discussing, the acceptance of the sum of money corresponds quite precisely to the rejection of the Resurrection. An imitation of the three theological virtues The encyclopedias tell us: money (which is not always silver) has three functions. It is a “measure of value,” a “store of value,” and a “medium of exchange.” As a “measure of value” it is a unit of account that enables us to balance completely different things and thus to avoid the perplexity that would come over us at the moment of a transaction if we were to ask a question such as: How many hours of babysitting is this pair of shoes worth? The question is all the more delicate because the saleslady may not have any children. Thanks to money, the motley actions and objects of this world are converted into precise quantities (so many seashells yesterday, so many dollars today), and these quantities make it possible to equalize values. Nothing is incomparable any more, therefore, and we have here a “measure for everything,” a “universal equivalent” that not only spares us the difficult questions mentioned above, but also gives us the pleasant assurance of saying, after a quick calculation, “One square foot in New York City is worth 975 Italian sausages,” or even: “A general practice doctor is worth three cashiers.” As a “store of value,” money allows us to defer the acquisition of goods over time. For it is not wealth in itself, but a means of obtaining it. Money is always something else: it is not what it is—a disk of metal or a slip of paper—that we find so arresting about it, but rather what it is not, what it enables us to have. In this sense, it has no odor of its own (it does not give off the aroma of a food), yet it can make us salivate over all sorts of merchandise that can be purchased with it. Because of this power to buy something as a future possession, it obtains something for us right away: the ability to dream about everything that one might shortly choose to treat oneself to: this handsome coat, this family vacation, this tantric massage, the latest Smartphone (but wait a while, a more sophisticated model will come out soon). Avarice is the fixation of this waking dream, purse in hand. The avaricious person rejoices in all the purchases that he could make, and in order to keep them all within reach of his pocket, he makes none of them. This does not prevent us from acknowledging that money is above all a medium of exchange. It facilitates exchange because of its aforementioned functions, but also because it is manageable and divisible. If I wanted to have a livelihood for a year by giving up the use of my house for that amount of time, it would be necessary for the butcher, the baker, the street vendor, the sous-chef at the fast-food restaurant, the Apple store clerk, etc., to be able to come and live there, taking turns or simultaneously, which would give them the opportunity for close encounters they really don’t want at all…. Therefore, it is better for me to move into an apartment and to convert this house into money, which I will exchange for their goods and services. This shows that this “medium of exchange” is more than a medium: it tends to exchange the usage value for the exchange value itself, reducing your house to a piece of merchandise, transforming all the most valuable things that you might do and have into the ability to acquire what has a more or less expensive price tag. This is true because, although the absence of money reduces you to being only able to do things yourself, the abundance of it obliges you not to do things any more and not really to use things any more, but rather to buy ready-made products and endlessly replace them. That being the case, it is curious that the three functions that we have just mentioned correspond, as though by chance, to the three theological virtues—faith, hope, and charity (and this correspondence is no doubt what enables money—a talent, a mite, or a drachma, according to the parable—to serve as a metaphor for grace). Whereas faith allows us to consider every being as a fantastic creature beloved by the eternal Father, money as a measure of value makes us regard them as an article with a price. Whereas hope opens us up to unexpected beatitudes, money as a store of value guarantees us access to the offers at a shopping mall. Whereas charity results in the communion of persons, money as a medium of exchange presides over the circulation of merchandise. Trader or witness? Now we can guess why the pieces of silver accepted by the guards are sufficient to hide the truth to this day. What they experienced near the tomb was a great earthquake which rolled back the stone barring the entrance to the tomb, and the vision of someone whose appearance was like lightning…. And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men (Mt 28:2-4). There is nothing very comfortable about an experience like that—especially at dawn after a boring night keeping watch, when you are getting ready, not for a cataclysm that wakes the dead, but for the changing of the guard so that you can go home and get some sleep. And so, in order to avoid a lot of trouble, so as not to have to testify to something that is beyond them and would put their social situation at risk, they gladly admit that all that glitters is not glory and spread a good old story about burglary while they slept. The term translated here as “story” is logos, or, actually, ho logos: the word. In contrast to the incarnate Word, therefore, here we have the monetized word. It is not so much a matter of not believing in the Resurrection as of making people believe—and this is of capital importance, so to speak—in the removal of corpses. You just can’t escape the necessity of believing (as we saw in the introduction). But either you believe in the logos without money (Every one who thirsts, come to the waters, even if you have no money…. For thus says the Lord: "You were sold for nothing, and you shall be redeemed without money," Is 55:1; 52:3); or else you believe yourself and seek to make others believe with the logos of money (Those who lavish gold from the purse, and weigh out silver in the scales, hire a goldsmith, and he makes it into a god; then they fall down and worship! Is 46:6). This logos of money has the advantage of being quantifiable and, above all, quantifying. It puts you in control rather than into a relationship of trust. With it, you do not found your existence on faith in a life that is stronger than death, but on belief in theft, in necessary exploitation, in the inevitable trafficking in bodies, while we sleep peacefully in our beds. This is the...