Spiritual Stimulus

Our economic crisis at once camouflages and manifests the deeper, underlying spiritual crisis. Excessive debt is the immediate cause but the more foundational malady is affluenza, an addictive obsession with possessions, conspicuous consumption, status and financial security…all rooted in disbelief. This crisis is a stimulus, allowed in God’s loving providence, to gently prompt us back to trust in him (not our equity), simplicity, generosity and thanksgiving.

I accept the consensus among economics that the crisis requires an immediate and substantial influx of cash. This necessitates close to a trillion dollars of debt to be repaid latter. Ironically, we respond to a debt-caused problem by an increase of debt. This is not comforting.

This would be tolerable if the immediate stimulus was balanced by a forward-looking plan addressing underlying problems with reason and sobriety. Unfortunately, the President’s plan is not merely an immediate stimulus but also includes within it his ideological vision for the future. It entails permanent changes involving things like health care as well as sexual/cultural policies like funding for contraception and abortion.

As an American I am rooting for the stimulus to save jobs and homes; as an economic moderate, I have sympathies for universal health care and a degree of economic redistribution but have reservations about how we (actually, our children) will pay for it without damage to a free, market economy; as a moral conservative, I am horrified that the liberal hegemony is using this crisis to advance their ethos of death and recreational/sterile sexuality.

Today’s gospel has the apostles, anxious about the storm raging about them, waking Jesus from his sleep in the boat. He is stern with them: “Why are you terrified? Do you not yet have faith?” (Mark 4: 35-41)

This is not a time for anxiety about jobs, homes, savings and financial security.

This is not a time for trust in trillion-dollar debt, condoms and universal health care.

This is a time for faith: a renewal in prayer, fasting, sacramental immersion, generosity, and the strengthening of the holy bonds within family and Church.

This is a time to gently increase our trust in Jesus, even if he is sleeping in the boat.