From pages 231-232…
The notion of commercium spirituale (commerce of the Spirit) was central to the thought world of Paulinus. … In Latin usage, the work commercium – from which our own word “commerce” is derived- did not carry with it the brash and calculating overtones that “commerce” and “exchange” now evoke. Rather, the word commercium evoked any form of profitable bonding. It conjured up the idea of fruitful reciprocity. More general, commercium implied a “harmony within duality.” Thus, the word commercium came to Paulinus already charged with expectations of “harmony within duality.” Such harmony pointed to a world redeemed. Paulinus used the word in relation to pious giving. But the notion of spiritual exchange through pious giving was only a special case. Behind the commercium by which earthly wealth flowed upward to heaven lay the decisive joining of heaven and earth brought about by the coming of Christ. The incarnation of Christ had been the foundational act of “exchange.” It rendered possible and thinkable all other forms of contact between God and humanity. Paulinus wrote this to Ausonius as early as 394: “God has clothed himself in us, entering into eternal links of exchange between mankind and God.” In the words of Catherine Conybeare, through the Incarnation of Christ “each nature – man and God-laid down its essential unlikeness,” For late antique persons, the stark contrast between human and divine, between material and spiritual, between body and soul, and between the heavy, turbulent earth and the serenity of the star-filled world beyond the moon had been fixed components in their imaginative universe. No joining could have been more improbable, no paradox more audacious than to bring these antithesis together….
The mystique of wealth is still with us. It is not subtle. We see it in all media that
tempt us to believe that wealth, with is comforts, privileges and conspicuous
display, is a place of refuge and safety in a dangerous world. Indeed, according to the mystique, if I were
wealthy my life would be meaningful, full and secure. Of course, we know this is not true. While it is better to have adequate resources
than to be exposed to want, wealth is no shield from insecurity and misery of
all sorts.
The good news is that we are invited to re-frame the fact of
wealth in the light of the Gospel. As
inductees into the Commerce of the Spirit through Baptism, we live with all our
resource trained on that place where the Kingdom of God and the earth as we
know it come together. We see that place
most clearly in the person of Jesus Christ and in the sacred meal he left
us. In that meal, our gifts become a
sharing with enough for all and room for all – a fruitful mutuality and
reciprocity.
