“Your God is gentile and mild. He does not command that while you are a pilgrim on earth you must utterly forgo creaturely consolations; indeed, He created all things to serve you. But he did command that you use them with moderation, sobriety, temperance, that you share them cheerfully with the needy, and that your possessions not be your master but you theirs.”
Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621) scholar and lecturer, in The Mind’s Ascent to God by the Ladder of Created Things as recounted in The Quotable Saint ed. Rosemary Ellen Guiley (New York: Visionary Living, 2002) 204.
Downsizing helps put things in perspective. We use this. We don’t use that. Throw this away. Share that with someone who can use it. The process is simultaneously freeing and exhausting.
How do we accumulate so much stuff? God provides the resources to buy stuff, and we are attentive to enjoyment. We are not always as sober on the sharing side. We tend to be intoxicated by and attached to stuff or we fear for the future and stockpile it, hence the charge to master, rather than be mastered by, possessions.
Bellarmine offers instruction here that echoes Jesus and Paul: use creaturely consolations with sobriety and share them cheerfully. Jesus enjoyed life in community and lived as simply as anyone; He did not even have a place to lay his head. Paul enjoyed fellowship with the saints too, and he traveled lightly and missionally through life.
For the rest of us, the sober use and cheerful sharing of creaturely consolations requires intentionality. We must daily choose this lifestyle. When we do, we build community, reflect Christ’s love, and our decision helps us remain detached from the destructive power of consumerism.