Is Economic Prosperity Good for the Soul?

During my family holiday in a small Mexican town called Tequisquiapan, I attended 7am Sunday Mass in the local cathedral. It was an eye-opening experience. The church, prominently located in the town square, was jam-packed, standing room only. At the end of the Mass, a large group of people went up to the altar to get personalised blessings from the celebrant.

The atmosphere was one of reverence and receptivity to the graces of God. The people in the congregation were mostly of modest means, and there was a palpable sense that anyone who crossed the threshold of that church was there to receive God’s blessings and pardon.

My experience visiting Tequisquiapan, the long-time town of my wife’s grandparents, brought to life the well-known paradox of economic prosperity: while most of us welcome economic prosperity with open arms, the cold truth is that a certain degree of poverty and deprivation is often more conducive to humility, gratitude, and reverence than economic prosperity and material comfort.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not suggesting we should keep people in poverty to protect their souls. But we should not be so naive as to embrace a stereotype of the “Protestant work ethic,” according to which economic prosperity is an unmitigated blessing of God that infallibly promotes humility, charity and faith in God’s providence. We have only to recall Jesus’s words, that “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:24), to realise that there is no easy alignment between economic prosperity and spiritual growth.