How my book, Money As Sacrament, Was Born

Long after Mom’s death, I found myself desperate to open up about the subject of money. For sixteen years as a teaching nun, there had been little enough attention paid to money. When I left the convent aswirl in confusion over this vast yet personal subject, I proceeded to take on three jobs, somehow fearful for my very survival. I worked day and night and nearly wrecked myself. Soon I had to admit that all that holy silence on the subject had done this pilgrim little good. Clearly my ideas and approach to money needed much retooling..

I sought to unearth the hidden emotional places where I had lived with money, places both mystic and archaic. My trust in God to go on showering manna on the world ran up against formidable financial insecurities I never realized I had.

In my follow-up incarnation as beneficiary of a substantial inheritance from my parents, I wondered if I could bring myself to embrace, at last, this illusive energy that had danced around me for so long. Maybe there was even a deeper spiritual truth to discover here.

Church sermons were often critical of the rich, as if possession of money made one less a Christian. I struggled for a different slant. I longed to affirm the use of money as an extension of human identity, perhaps even one of the most effective ways of expressing who we are. When I define money without reference to me or you it lacks any meaning; could it be that each of us simply defines money from his and her own place? That whatever moral value money possessed was merely up to us? That sounded familiar . . . “By their actions, you will know them” could be very close to “by their money, you shall know them”. Of course not in the sense so much of our culture sees it, in the size of our stockpile. But known by what values we assign to that otherwise most neutral of commodities. A conclusion became unavoidable, and I continue to share this truth wherever I speak: the healthy love of money actually empowers the soul, widens its horizons and grants it the possibility of an extraordinary role in the world.
Think about it.