Riches in the Kingdom
Money is not an unmixed good. It brings in its train many temptations. It is easier to bear poverty than wealth-easier to be a saint when life is hard than when prosperity lavishes her gifts.
When the Pope was showing St. Francis of Assisi the treasures of the Vatican, he remarked: “We can hardly say with the Apostle, ‘Silver and gold have we none.'” Francis replied aptly and incisively: “Yes, holy father, and I suppose we can hardly say either, ‘Rise up and walk.'” Often it is in the poverty of earthly circumstances that the soul becomes possessed of an authority which wealth cannot buy.
What compensations there will be hereafter in the times of the restitution of all things! See Acts 3:21. Then the unsatisfied yearnings for husband, wife, or child; the love which craved for love; the lonely, the homeless, the pilgrim, will neither hunger nor thirst, because the Lamb will lead him to the fountains of waters of life.