THE DEVIL’S DUNG

Note well, you men who are yet to be born! Jesus was never willing to touch a coin with His hand. Those hands of His which molded the clay of the earth as a cure for blind eyes, those hands which touched the contaminated flesh of lepers and of the dead, those hands which clasped the body of Judas, so much more contaminated than clay, than leprosy, than putrefaction, those white pure healing hands which nothing could sully, never suffered themselves to be touched by one of those metal disks which carry in relief the profiles of the proprietors of the world. Jesus could mention money in His parables; He could see it in the hands of others, but touch it—no! To Him who scorned nothing, money was disgusting. It was repugnant to Him with a repugnance that was like horror. All His nature was in revolt at the thought of a contact with those filthy symbols of wealth.

But one day even Jesus was constrained to look at a piece of money. They asked Him if it was permitted to the true Israelite to pay the tribute, and He answered at once, “Show me the tribute money.” They showed it to Him, but He would not take it. It was a Roman coin stamped with the hypocritical face of Augustus. But He wished to seem not to know whose face it was. He asked, “Whose is this image and superscription?” They answered, “Cæsar’s.” Then He threw into the faces of the wily interrogators the answer which silenced them, “Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.”

Give back that which is not yours, money does not belong to us. It is manufactured by the powerful for the needs of power. It is the property of kings and of the kingdom, of that other kingdom which is not ours. The king represents force and is the protector of wealth; but we have nothing to do with violence and reject riches. Our Kingdom has no potentates and has no rich men; the King of our Heaven does not coin money. Money is a means for the exchange of earthly goods, but we do not seek for earthly goods. What little is necessary for us, a little sunshine, a little air, a little water, a piece of bread, a cloak, will be given freely to us by God and by God’s friends. Tire yourselves out, you other people, all your lives to gather together a great pile of those round minted tokens. We have no use for them. For us they are definitely superfluous. Therefore we give them back; we give them back to him who has had them coined, to him who has had his portrait put on them, so that all should know that they are his.

Jesus never needed to give back any money because He never possessed any. He gave the order to His disciples not to carry bags for offerings on their journeys. He made one single exception, and that a fearful one. The Gospel tells us that one apostle kept the common purse. This disciple was Judas, and even Judas felt himself forced to give back the payment for his betrayal before disappearing in death. Judas is the mysterious victim sacrificed to the curse of money. Money carries with it, together with the filth of the hands which have clutched and handled it, the inexorable contagion of crime. Among the unclean things which men have manufactured to defile the earth and defile themselves, money is perhaps the most unclean. These counters of coined metal which pass and repass every day among hands still soiled with sweat or blood, worn by the rapacious fingers of thieves, of merchants, of misers; this round and viscid sputum of the Mint, desired by all, sought for, stolen, envied, loved more than love and often more than life; these ugly pieces of stamped matter, which the assassin gives to the cut-throat, the usurer to the hungry, the enemy to the traitor, the swindler to his partner, the simonist to the barterer in religious offices, the lustful to the woman bought and sold, these foul vehicles of evil which persuade the son to kill his father, the wife to betray her husband, the brother to defraud his brother, the wicked poor man to stab the wicked rich man, the servant to cheat his master, the highwayman to despoil the traveler; this money, these material emblems of matter, are the most terrifying objects manufactured by man. Money which has been the death of so many bodies is every day the death of thousands of souls. More contagious than the rags of a man with the pest, than the pus of an ulcer, than the filth of a sewer, it enters into every house, shines on the counters of the money-changers, settles down in money-chests, profanes the pillow of sleep, hides itself in the fetid darkness of squalid back-rooms, sullies the innocent hands of children, tempts virgins, pays the hangman for his work, goes about on the face of the earth to stir up hatred, to set cupidity on fire, to hasten corruption and death.

Bread, already holy on the family board, becomes on the table of the Church the everlasting body of Christ. Money too is the visible sign of a transubstantiation. It is the infamous Host of the Demon. He who loves money and receives it with joy is in visible communion with the Demon. He who touches money with pleasure touches without knowing it the filth of the Demon. The pure cannot touch it, the holy man cannot endure it. They know with unshakable certainty its ugly essence, and they have for money the same horror that the rich man has for poverty.