If you want Lenten counsel–or really, counsel for any time of the year–go to Saint Teresa of Avila and especially her classic book, The Life of Teresa of Jesus.

It is a message very critical at a time when so many are focused and obsessed with the material. This is the Age of the Multi-Billionaire, when everyone spends and everyone seems rich. Everything is gilded. Rich in what?

Lent is a time to shed wrongful fixations.

“I do not believe I ever had to confess to being covetous of money,” wrote Saint Teresa. “If the blessing of which I now see myself in possession could be purchased with money, I should set tremendous store by it, but it is clear that this blessing is gained by abandoning everything.

“What is there that can be bought with this money which people desire? Is there anything valuable? Is there anything lasting?

“If not, why do we desire it?

“It is but a miserable ease with which it provides us and one that costs us very dear. Very often it provides hell for us; it buys us eternal fire and endless affliction.”

We know the expression “money can’t buy happiness.” Neither can it purchase sanctity. In fact it weighs one down in the opposite direction.

Yet we find it difficult to detach.

“The soul sees what blindness there is in the world where pleasures are concerned and how even in this life they purchase only trials and unrest. What disquiet! What discontent! What useless labor!

“Oh,” said Teresa, “if all would agree to consider it as senseless dross, how well the world would get on, and how little trafficking there would be! How friendly we should all be with one another if nobody were interested in money and honor!

“I really believe this would be a remedy for everything.”

[resources: The Life of Teresa of Jesus; highly recommended]

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