Conforming (phase 2), Three Types of Attitude toward Possessions (step13), session 2

Imagine that each of the three couples obtains a great sum of money. The way in which they acquired it is honest and morally perfect, but as Ignatius puts it "not entirely as they should have, for the love of God,"  which means that they did not search for it as a result of a proper discernment process. There are many of this kind of thing in our life; we acquired or discovered them before reflecting or even thinking about how it fits in our existence and in our relationship with God. These things are morally perfect, to possess them is honorable and they might be the source of much good, but if not integrated in our love of God they constitute a "part of that wealth that seeks to absolutize itself and therefore become the starting point of true sin." - Step by Step Retreats, step 13

First, a consideration of what either St. Ignatius or Karl Rahner (it's impossible to tell without consulting the referred resource which of these two introduced this concept; for that matter Rahner may have borrowed from someone else) means in using the term "morally perfect."  From context, they clearly can't mean anything like "incorruptible" or "not susceptible to use for sinful purposes."  It appears to mean something more like "a thing that is good so long as it is kept in its proper place." When you think about it, this applies to pretty much every gift God has bestowed on us.

In the previous session I pointed out how my own application of this most urgently needs to focus on something besides wealth and material possessions.

Let us suppose that the couples in our example desire a great spiritual freedom and as they feel the attachment to this money presents an impediment of their goal, they want to free themselves of it . . . -  ibid.

This is where I am only beginning to enter into a deeper recognition that I still need to grow. There have always been ways that I think about my life and my circumstances that I now see represent attachments that reveal, at their core, that I tend to place my trust more in those things than in God to meet my needs. I suppose that, for me, this has always been primarily true of my emotional needs. For many years, this resulted in a tendency to place too high of a priority on certain of my friendships, to the detriment of my relationship with my bride. In some cases this resulted in those other relationships taking on some aspects that should have been reserved for my marriage.  It has only been relatively recently that I have learned not to allow this to happen, and as a result my recent friendships have been more balanced.

Yet I still find myself basically complaining to God that he is not meeting my needs because of the absence of the sort of friendship that I perceive that I "need" to have in my life, as if God has ever truly neglected my needs. So perhaps this present time is itself a gift from God, as much as my recent morally perfect friendships have been, to teach me to trust in him rather than in them.